Agency

After being little more than a blip on the radar in 2007, social media is now essential to marketing in the retail industry.

Centro for Puerto Rican Studies has released a new research brief “Demographic Transitions” by researchers Patricia Silver and Carlos Vargas-Ramos which takes a closer look at where Puerto Ricans are settled and where they are migrating.

Hispanic creative and PR duties for Heineken previously Vidal Partnership are being re-assigned.

In a new announcement that confirms a wave of hires of high-level executives at d expósito & Partners, LLC, the agency welcomed Donald Davis, who has acted as a key player on the general market media scene throughout his successful career. Mr. Davis becomes Director of Media Services, informed Gloria Constanza, Partner/Chief Contact Strategist.

MAGNA GLOBAL forecasts media owners advertising revenues to grow by +3.1% in 2013. This is 1.4% less than our previous forecast published in June 2012 (+4.5%). The revision is mostly caused by a slow-down in economic growth and continued economic uncertainty in Europe and the US, as well as the cautionary marketing spend that took place in the second half of this year.

ZenithOptimedia predicts global ad expenditure will grow 4.1% in 2013, reaching US$518 billion by the end of the year. As has been the case since the economic downturn began in 2007, this growth will be led by developing markets, which we forecast to grow by 8% on average in 2013, while developed markets grow by just 2%, weighed down by the eurozone crisis.

Despite a varied and mixed outlook for the global economy, chief marketers report positive outlooks for their roles and functional areas. Nearly 70 percent received a salary or bonus in 2011, and 73 percent expect the same at the end of this year depending on the performance of their businesses, reports the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council.

A major analysis of world public opinion was released today by Ipsos— one of the world’s largest market and opinion research companies. The report, titled “Ipsos Global @dvisory: The Economic Pulse of the World” is based on 18,713 recent interviews in 24 countries around the world. The report examines citizens’ assessment of current state of their country’s economy for a total global perspective.

One way marketers can contend with nonlinear media consumption and a reformulated path to purchase is through content creation. Consumers not only respond to content, but also seek it out. In effect, content is the grease that turns the wheels of media.

In his fascinating new book The Signal and the Noise, New York Times political blogger Nate Silver discusses what he calls the “prediction learning curve,” a model for mapping the relationship between effort and prediction accuracy. Not surprisingly, the relationship strongly resembles the well-known Pareto Effect—i.e. about 20 percent of the initial effort (time, money, effort) yields about 80 percent of the prediction accuracy.

Ninety-six percent of American mothers plan to make changes to their food-buying habits in 2013.

República announced that it selected Strong Women, Strong Girls (SWSG) as the inaugural recipient of the Repúblicares pro-bono initiative.

The U.S. birth rate dipped in 2011 to the lowest ever recorded, led by a plunge in births to immigrant women since the onset of the Great Recession.

Google began a campaign last year to help Get American businesses online by giving free webites to businesses, and hosting events to teach individuals how to create their site, learn Adwords and other Google platforms.