Hispanic TV Summit: Millennials, Social Are Hot Marketing Targets.

By: Todd Spangler – Multichannel News

TV networks and operators want to boost their reach among younger Hispanic audiences, by stepping up social-media marketing and delivering more content across multiple platforms.

Hispanic marketers are strongly focused on Millennials, given that Latinos will represent 80% of the growth in 18-29 age group over the next few years, according to Karen Habib, Eclipse Marketing Services’ director of Hispanic marketing and development.

“You need to adapt with an evolving business. The challenge is allocating budgets across an increasingly fragmented marketplace,” said Habib, speaking on a panel of marketing executives at the Multichannel News/B&C Tenth Annual Hispanic Television Summit here Wednesday.

Telemundo Media executive vice president of marketing Susan Solano Vila (pictured above) said the network produces its own original content, so it’s better positioned than others to reach younger audiences by offering content across TV, online and mobile platforms.

About 68% of Telemundo’s viewers watched the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games while using tablets or some other device, yet at the same time 50% of those watching online ended up tuning in to television, she noted.

“It’s about that multiplatform experience — that’s what we’re managing and taking advantage of,” Solano Vila said.

This week, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo, the second-largest Spanish-language U.S. behind Univision, launched a rebranding campaign — its first in 12 years — with a new logo and the tagline, “The Power of T” (“El Poder de T”).

The letter “T” in Spanish is pronounced “te” (“you”), which will let Telemundo deliver the overarching marketing message to multiple audiences in myriads of ways, such as “T informa” and “T habla,” Solano Vila said.

“We’re not one thing. It’s very hard to be that ‘one thing’ when you’re a general broadcast network,” she said.
Especially for Hispanic marketers, social media presents a rich opportunity to enlist fans as brand ambassadors, Habib said.

“When Latinos get excited about something, they want to broadcast is to all their friends and family. Isn’t that what Facebook is all about?” she said.

A year ago, Verizon Communications launched Hispanic social marketing programs for FiOS, dubbed Somos FiOS, with Facebook and Twitter. Oscar Madrid, director of multicultural marketing for Verizon FiOS, said his team carefully studied how Hispanic consumers wanted to be communicated with.

“I didn’t want to be a me-too,” he said. The Somos FiOS page on Facebook now has 46,274 “likes” while the Twitter account has just 1,617 followers.

Music Choice, meanwhile, is “the new kid on the block when it comes to Hispanic marketing,” said Nolan Baynes, director of marketing for the music service.

And reaching “kids” is a top priority for Music Choice, which is beefing up its selection of Latino artists and expanding social media outreach.

“For us, we are basically an urban and pop network — so it was a natural choice for us when it came to the Latino market to focus on the next-generation Latino audience,” Baynes said.

As part of Music Choice’s “crawl, walk, run” approach to the Hispanic market, Baynes said, the network had to start by ensuring it had a robust lineup of content. For example, when Comcast launched a new Hispanic tier earlier this year, Music Choice populated its Latino-targeted service about 500 music videos in 11 VOD categories, plus six dedicated audio channels (which it expects to expand to 30). Music Choice also is promoting its user-programmed SWRV music channel for Latino audiences, he added.

The panel was moderated by Adriana Waterston, vice president of marketing and business development for research firm Horowitz Associates.