Agency

America’s milk companies launch Milk Life campaign in Spanish, the new multi-million dollar, cross-platform campaign designed to reinforce how milk’s many nutritional benefits – including high-quality protein – can help power the everyday potential of Latino families.

The US consumer packaged goods (CPG) and consumer products industry’s advertising spending on digital media will hit $4.20 billion in 2014 and steadily increase to $7.04 billion by 2018, according to a new eMarketer report, “The US CPG and Consumer Products Industry 2014: Digital Ad Spending Forecast and Trends,” part of our new report series, “2014 Digital Ad Spending Benchmarks by Industry.”

Culture is moving at an ever increasing rate. Consumers are cynical, tired of being sold to. The marketplace isn’t getting bigger yet competitors continue to flood the market. Meaningful differentiation and true innovation is increasingly hard to unlock.

Agencies are searching for a way to remain relevant in the data age of marketing. As a result of this quest, many are announcing “big strategic deals” with publishers like Facebook and Twitter.  These deals are intended to guarantee publisher revenue in exchange for preferred levels of service, but isn’t that what agencies are supposed to provide on their own?  Why do agencies have to be “all-in” in order to achieve efficiency?  Don’t these kinds of deals infringe on the agency’s ability to be nimble, strategic and flexible enough to find the right way to spend their client’s money?

Dallas based iNSPIRE! announced that Matt Reyes has officially joined the team as Director of Digital & Social Strategy. Matt will lead social and digital campaign development for clients such as Tecate, Indio, and Sprint reporting to iNSPIRE! President, Lonnie Limon.

Universal Pictures announced an intensified commitment to its multicultural marketing division by promoting Fabian Castro to oversee the department and extending Talitha Watkins’ contract. 

Americans appear ready to move on from worrying about the recession and one thing seems clear: they need a vacation.  Mintel’s annual comparative audit report, American Lifestyles 2014, suggests that renewed consumer spending is in line with pre-recession trends and consumer optimism is higher than it’s been in years.

In an earlier post, we showed how Hispanic Adult Millennials aren’t yet where they want to be in their careers. As they work their way toward landing their dream jobs, many are employed in low-wage professions they’ve taken just for the paycheck.  So when it comes to their current jobs, what are their biggest challenges?

US advertisers will collectively spend upward of $50 billion on digital advertising in 2014, according to new figures from eMarketer. This represents the fifth year in a row of torrid growth, reflecting broad economic and advertising industry trends that have driven nonstop, double-digit gains across virtually all industries since the trough of the Great Recession in 2009.

Eventus and the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County announced the creation of a new concert series, CUBA BEAT, sponsored by Baptist Health South Florida. The innovative series which begins on September 27th as part of the 2014-2015 season, will spotlight the best in Cuban music by celebrating diverse musical genres and its creators. Every show will feature a different artist, each a master of the highlighted genre.

Even in a world where consumers can connect with each other via text in an instant and do their shopping from their couches, people still crave a physical place to congregate, connect and engage. And more and more, shopping centers are a big part of fulfilling that need. So as shopping centers and malls remain prominent in our culture and consciousness, developers and retailers have big opportunities to become the centers of their communities.

It is a common situation faced by healthcare providers today. A patient, unable to communicate well in English, arrives for treatment and often waits longer than other patients to receive treatment, may not fully understand the treatment that they are receiving, and sometimes bring a different set of cultural values and experiences with health care providers.  Depending on the language and staffing support available, the outcome for the patient becomes a risky situation.  By Edward T. Rincón, Ph.D.

Digitization is rewriting the rules of competition, with incumbent companies most at risk of being left behind. Here are six critical decisions CEOs must make to address the strategic challenge posed by the digital revolution.  by Martin Hirt and Paul Willmott

By Gonzalo López Martí @LopezMartiMiami

We keep whining about Donald Sterling and his recently surfaced racist comments.
Question is, why do we want him to apologize?
Will a staged act of phony public contrition be enough for us to forgive him, move on and resume business as usual?
He was right when he scolded Anderson Cooper for having a “plantation mentality”.
We all have it.
Sterling’s point is quite insightful: we love our white slave owners.
We are happy to keep the status quo and butt our heads against the hurricane-proof glass ceiling.

A while ago, I wrote about terminology I wanted to rid the industry of, with immediate effect. It was (to date) one of my best-read and most responded-to columns on MediaPost. But it is not just the over-usage of industry lingo that is bad for the industry. Even worse is that the industry is still holding on to marketing terminologies and definitions of yesteryear.

Many brands may be “mother-approved,” but which ones score the highest marks? Based on research by YouGov, personal care brands were the best perceived by mothers, with Dove and Johnson & Johnson taking the top two spots, respectively.

Telemundo announced the launch of ‘Los Únicos’ sweepstakes with Dr Pepper to celebrate Telemundo’s on-air talent.
 

Tecate and Tecate Lightd announced the launch of their national summer retail campaign “Bold Legends of the Game,” which will celebrate soccer fans 21+ who have made legendary sacrifices in order to watch their favorite soccer team.

Connected TV viewing continues to rise, but many media buyers are still struggling to take advantage of the ad opportunities the channel offers. In an April 2014 study by Mixpo, just less than half of US digital media buyers considered buying connected TV video ad inventory when planning an online video campaign.

Americans spend more than one-fifth of their time watching traditional TV—and a lot of ads, as a result. Adding to this increased ad exposure is the fact that the number of commercial minutes each hour has increased year-over-year on broadcast television, according to Nielsen’s annual Advertising and Audiences report. In the past five-year period, despite network television’s climb, cable leads with 15 minutes and 38 seconds of commercial time during each hour on average in 2013, compared to network TV’s 14 minutes and 15 seconds.