Public Relations

Sofia Vergara is probably the most recognizable Hispanic actress working in English-language television. She is one of the stars of “Modern Family,” among the highest-rated scripted shows on network television, and she has parlayed her celebrity into commercials for brands like Pepsi and Cover Girl.

The question is not whether Ethnic Consumers that are lumped for diversity purposes into the MULTICULTURAL BUCKET offer opportunities for marketers.  We all know the answer to that question. The question is whether there is a need or a purpose for having one agency that implements all aspects of a campaign that can then be called a MULTICULTURAL approach.

By Gonzalo López Martí / Atkins López Martí, LLC You started your own business. Welcome to the party. Face the music. And dance. You are on your own now. No more whining. No more excuses. No more finger pointing. You only have yourself to blame. Some assorted pieces of advice.

By Jorge Mercado – Associate Vice President, Marketing and Communications – Americas / Prisa Digital Another AHAA conference has come and gone and all in all, I feel that Roberto Orci, Horacio Gavilan and the entire team stepped up to the challenge.  There was definitely some headroom made with this year’s conference.  It was great to see some of the familiar faces as well as several new ones.

The AHAA Conference began this week in Miami and I assume you have heard that they have expanded their Board of Directors and added an Advisory Board that include clients, media and research executives, besides just ad agency executives.
They also do not want to call the organization the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, they want to be called AHAA – The Voice of Hispanic Marketing. A new COMPASS! I have high HOPES. This new change will impact the scope and breath of AHAA as we lead into 2013.

In 1996, AHAA was founded to grow our marketplace and promote our member agencies. Today Hispanic marketing is more important, more challenging and more nuanced. Gene Bryan –

Several months ago in October of 2011 I wrote an op-ed piece titled “I have high hopes for the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies”.

It was necessary to write last year’s op-ed piece since I felt after working with AHAA for fifteen years, the momentum and directionality of our Industry’s trade-marketing association did not represent the needs or that it was not a compass for our Industry. 

By Jose Villa / Sensis We hear the term “multicultural” a lot. Marketers, academics, and industry leaders love to talk about multicultural groups and the growth of America’s multicultural population — the various minority groups, including Hispanic, African-American, Asian, and “other” (Middle Eastern, European, South Asian, etc.) that are rapidly expanding in size and influence.

By Xavier Mantilla | Director of Sales – RedMas In the last 24 months we have seen a shift in the way brands and general market media agencies have come together to work with Hispanic media companies in order to reach these valued consumers. However there are huge shifts in behavior that most of us that work in the media space are yet to face. For a long time we always used terms like “targeted content” to mean Spanish language media (planning and buying), however, when we spend upwards of 90% of our budgets on Spanish language only

By Joe Castro – Zubi Advertising I never sleep better than during the holidays that now seem a faded distant memory. The new year has brought with it the reality of potentially great political change on the horizon, and with all the political rhetoric a reawakening to the disturbing truth of how Hispanics are viewed by many other Americans in this country.

By Joe Zubizarreta / Zubi Advertising – Zubination Having just watched the pilot for Rob Schneider’s new show, Rob, I am totally disgusted by the way CBS has portrayed a Mexican-American family in an attempt to lure Latinos to general market television. The only thing I can think of is that they wanted to use every stereotype in the book to generate non-Hispanic viewership.

As many of you have seen in the movie 2012 and have heard from scholars based on their interpretation of Mayan culture and the Mayan calendar, the world will end December 2012. Doomsday is upon us in 355 days on December 21, 2012.

On December 14, organizers of one of the nation’s premier live music events, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, revealed the lineup for its 2012 extravaganza. Presented by Shell, “Jazz Fest” has become a two-weekend celebration of the best in American music. It has far outgrown its own name, and over the years has welcomed headline rock acts to the big stages.

It’s Ho! Ho! Ho! time, party time and looking to next year.  So with that said, here are my Top 10 pet peeves for 2012. 1- Professionals in our Industry need to understand the need to return calls and e-mails.  It is just proper business etiquette, even if there is not an opportunity to do business.  People need communication and have to deliver communication back to their people.  Two-way street.  Return your own calls, don’t have you assistant do it.  Nobody, and I mean nobody is that important or that busy.

As of late I’m hearing in Hispanic communications circles much ado about whether or not marketers should pay Latino bloggers for posting brand-related content, product reviews, etc. While this topic has been fully addressed in mainstream circles, the issues take on greater complexities in the Latino blogosphere.