Agency

The decade of the 2010’s will require more cultural sensitivity than ever before. Not that cultural sensitivity was not needed much earlier in the US and around the world, but conditions are ripe now for understanding how culture can enhance profits and better marketing.

Despite widespread negative perceptions of robocalls and SPAM email, large numbers of U.S. adults are reporting benefits from automated communications, especially younger generations. A recent study conducted by Harris Interactive and sponsored by Varolii Corporation shows the key to receptivity is delivering relevant, personalized information that consumers actually want. This is particularly important because adults also indicated they are increasingly overwhelmed with the number of messages they receive and are less likely to respond to generic notifications that offer no personalized benefit.

As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public’s recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases.

Texas gained more people than any other state between July 1, 2008, and July 1, 2009 (478,000), followed by California (381,000), North Carolina (134,000), Georgia (131,000) and Florida (114,000), according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

There’s no doubt, as was pointed out in a recent analysis of Hispanic news stories, that a Puerto Rican was the Hispanic highlight of 2009–Sonia Sotomayor. But if we can point to one Latin nationality that has been making their presence very well known in American culture, it has to be our Dominican brethren.

Sure we’ve had a Dominican make a huge splash in the world of fashion (De Le Renta for those of you who are dominicano-challenged) and Dominican power has certainly been felt on American baseball diamonds. But 2009 has shown us how far Dominicans have established themselves on the American cultural and entertainment scene–music, film, TV.

Published by Manny Gonzalez. To read El Blog CLICK above.

From 2006 to 2008, internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points, from 54% to 64%. In comparison, the rates for whites rose four percentage points, and the rates for blacks rose only two percentage points during that time period. Though Latinos continue to lag behind whites, the gap in internet use has shrunk considerably. Download report here.

Garcia Research and Santiago ROI launched LATINOMICS, The Hispanic Market Index, an ongoing tracking service to monitor consumer sentiment, economic activity, political perspectives and other issues of the day within the burgeoning US Hispanic community.