Hispanic Marketing Forum Uses The Community As Classroom.

With the rapid growth in the number of companies targeting the U.S. Hispanic market, so too are the ways in which they are impacting and influencing the Hispanic consumer. More and more marketers are going beyond general advertising and exploring emerging channels to directly attract the Hispanic consumer in the community and at retail. In order to effectively engage the Hispanic consumer, however, and make sure the dollars are hard at work, marketers are increasingly finding the need to take their knowledge of the marketplace to a new dimension.

This new forum “The Hispanic Market Immersion Tour’ is tapping a real need by taking the learning out of the conference room and into the community. On this three-day personalized tour, marketers interface with Hispanic entrepreneurs, watch consumers make purchases, talk to Hispanic consumers, meet with the Hispanic media, get a tour of a major Hispanic festival and eat authentic foods within the community.

According to Annette Monagas, a principal of AIM –Alternative & Innovative Marketing, a Hispanic marketing and promotions agency and one of two entities that has organized this first-ever comprehensive immersion tour of the market, “In order to be able to better formulate successful marketing strategies, it is necessary to experience firsthand what the environment looks like and what makes the consumer respond.”

In addition to taking participants to experience shopping centers, retail establishments and festivals in key Hispanic-dense locations, a critical tour component called On-Site Insights™ is employed in order to turn these viewed experiences into learnings that will ultimately be applicable to the formation of strategic marketing approaches.

“We developed On-Site Insights™ so that our tour participants get immediate feedback while they are experiencing the market. They walk away with a deep understanding of the Hispanic consumer’s world — including a better understanding of family attitudes, values and purchase behaviors — and how this applies to their specific business,” remarks Shelly Lipton, a Hispanic-marketing veteran and president of Community Direct, a co-organizer of the Immersion Tour.

With its proprietary On-Site Insights™ component, a real differentiating factor is the fact that a team of seasoned Hispanic marketing professionals accompany the tour every step of the way. The Hispanic Market Immersion Tour also includes related workshops that synthesize learning, interactive sessions that uncover go-to-market approaches, and complimentary geo-demographic mapping from Geoscape International that summarizes the key market and retail site characteristics of the Tour.

“We have gone to great lengths to make the tour fully comprehensive. And it will have as much value and prove to be just as much of an eye opener for the manager who has already pulled off a few Hispanic events as it will have for the brand manager who is just entering the market,” adds Jeff Symon, Hispanic marketing and promotions expert and president of AIM. “There’s always something to be learned for marketers at any level when your classroom is the ever-evolving Hispanic community,” he added.