Agency

You know you’re in “the Valley” when you start to see palm trees lining the roads and you get a whiff of carne asada on every street corner. It’s more than just a cluster of cities in Texas, it is a state of mind. As marketers, we want to try our best to reach consumers in the best possible ways. We want them to connect to our message, engage in our brand and ultimately buy our products. When we analyze Hispanic consumers in the US many of us break them down by generation, length of time in the US, education, basic demographics, but that is sometimes not enough. If we seriously want to understand consumers we must understand the places in which they live.

It’s no secret that Hispanic consumers are driving growth across a range of industries in the U.S., so it makes sense that many companies aren’t asking if this demographic is affecting the nation. Rather, they’re asking how they’re affecting it.

Marketers report strong doubts about their skills, effectiveness and ability to measure the impact of their campaigns according to research released from Adobe.

U.S. consumers intend to spend an average of $646 on gifts this holiday season, which would represent an 11 percent increase over the $582 they planned to spend, on average, in 2012, according to Accenture’s annual holiday shopping survey. Additionally, the survey shows that the appeal of Black Friday shopping for consumers has reached a five-year high and Thanksgiving Day has emerged as an established holiday season event. Although they plan to spend more, consumers also will be on the lookout for sizeable discounts throughout the holiday season.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news lately you’ve seen Univision posted some pretty big numbers. “Univision’s average of 1.81 million viewers aged 18-to-49 so far in July tops Fox, NBC and CBS, who are all clustered just under 1.5 million, the Nielsen company said.”

Granted, there are far fewer options in Spanish TV than there are in English, so Univision’s numbers get a big boost from lesser fragmentation…but still, those are some pretty big numbers, especially in that young demo. If you’re a brand looking for customers, Univision’s audience is tough to ignore.

Almost all Hispanic advertising shares one thing – the Spanish language. Hispanic marketing is big business, involving organizations from all segments of society and our economy. Yet almost all Hispanic advertising involves Spanish in some way.

National activity and regional spot marketing, where dealers keep the overall brand in tune to the local nuances, drive Ford Motor Co.’s digital brand strategy for US Hispanics. David Rodriguez, multicultural marketing manager at the automaker, spoke with eMarketer’s Danielle Drolet about the demographic, its mobile-skewing behaviors and the state of Spanish-language search.

This year marked the 10th anniversary of Coca-Cola’s Summer Love Festival: three days of parties, games, spas and music for Israeli teens—all with unlimited access to Coca-Cola. Of course, not every teenager who’d like to go can attend, setting up those who are absent for a serious case of FOMO: the fear of missing out, and in this case, the uneasy feeling that your peers are having a better time than you are. So Coca-Cola created a solution for a few of those left out: Social Robots, which allowed teens to join the fun virtually.

Even among the 85% of adults who do go online, experiences connecting to the internet may vary widely. For instance, even though 76% of adults use the internet at home, 9% of adults use the internet but lack home access. These internet users cite many reasons for not having internet connections at home, most often relating to issues of affordability—some 42% mention financial issues such as not having a computer, or having a cheaper option outside the home.

With Apple claiming the top position this year, Google jumps to #2 and Coca-Cola, the brand that held the #1 position for 13 consecutive years, moves to #3.

Emerging markets are changing where and how the world does business.

Emilio Romano – President of Telemundo Media as resigned his position in the company.

Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News have announced an esteemed panel of eight individual and impartial judges for the 2014 Multicultural TV Leadership Awards, being presented Tuesday, February 4, 2014 during the Multicultural TV Summit in New York City at the Grand Hyatt.
 

I had the pleasure of beginning my marketing career pre-Internet. Well, I think floppy disks and 4-color VGA monitors existed back in South Africa circa-1992/1993 (we were a little behind the rest of the world), but for the most part “you’ve got mail” was still a phrase reserved for the one job that surely would never be under threat: the mailman.

Today, the pendulum has swung to the opposite extreme, where the word “analog” is essentially verboten and a swear word and the 30-second spot is pretty much dead and buried (but don’t go telling that to those still buying and selling the old dog)

Sensis added three new members to its Los Angeles leadership team: Lois Mosgrove, Michelle Lavin and Jose Castillo.

Engaging with Millennial Moms, gaining their loyalty and winning their business means using dramatically different tactics compared to prior generations of moms.

I love marketing: the ability to develop a story, weave that story through media and watch it resonate with an audience.  The chance to follow that story through to a conclusion, potentially resulting in customers: this is a highly engaging activity for me, and one I thoroughly enjoy.  It’s not unlike watching “Breaking Bad,” to be honest.

A new GfK study shows that, across 12 categories, 37% of US shoppers – and 29% globally – are turning to both online and in-store shopping when making purchases. The extent of this “omni-channel” shopping phenomenon varies by category and country and seems to be tied to the rise in mobile device penetration.

American demand for cause is stronger than ever, especially among multicultural consumers. According to the 2013 Cone Communications Social Impact Study , Hispanics represent one of the most actively-engaged population segments to-date and exhibit stronger inclinations to purchase cause-related products as well as participate in corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts:

Tr3s’s 2012 study, Hispanic Adult Millennials Living the Next Normal: Age of Uncertainty, revealed that for Hispanic Adult Millennials, life is an exercise in risk assessment. They’re cautious with good reason: just as they were entering adulthood, the 2008 economic crisis put a damper on their bright future plans. Jobs became harder to come by – especially dream jobs – and leaving Mom and Dad’s house to live independently turned out to be not that easy. While they still hope to move out of their parents’ houses and get married, those timelines have been pushed back. For now, many are looking inward – sticking close to people they are certain they trust, fulfilling life goals before starting families of their own, and keeping up traditions like speaking Spanish at home.