Jackie Bird to lead AHAA – Education for Hispanic Marketing Professionals and Outreach to CMO’s.

The Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) announced the transition of leadership to new Chairwoman Jackie Bird, president/CEO of winglatino. Jose López-Varela, chief executive officer of ADN Communications assumed the role of chair-elect and Laura Marella, senior vice president/chief growth officer for Casanova Pendrill was elected to the position of vice chair. The AHAA Board of Directors created and approved the new Vice Chair board seat last year to ensure continuity in the association leadership and vision.

Carl Kravetz, chairman/chief strategic officer of cruz/kravetz:IDEAS steps down from his role as AHAA chairman but remains a critical leader on the board of directors responsible for the organization’s research initiatives. AHAA’s new research plans to explore the complexity of Latino identity and benchmark the value that Hispanic advertising agencies provide to advertisers will be announced in the coming weeks.

During his one-year term, Kravetz aligned the organization more closely with its strategic plan and the promise to deliver value to members. He advanced a rational, reasoned voice for the association on the immigration issue and hosted a forum in Washington, DC on the topic; led the industry in a celebration of AHAA’s 10-year anniversary and created the AHAA Archives of Hispanic Marketing at the Library of Broadcasting in Maryland; established a committee structure to facilitate more participation and contributions from AHAA members; and launched the Latino Identity Project, which has created a common language for marketers to define the uniqueness of Latino consumers that is not linguistic but strategic.

“This past year as chairman of AHAA has been exhausting and exhilarating – one of the best of my life,” says Kravetz. “I have had the privilege to work with passionate professionals and some of the best strategic and creative minds in the business. We set out last year to evolve our marketing approach and give Latino agencies permission to be as complex as the consumers we serve, and today the survival and growth of Latino ad agencies rests in our collective ability to retain and tap into our own Latino identity. It’s intuitive to us, and it’s the one thing general market agencies will never to be able to do because Hispanic is not what we do, it’s who we are.”

Bird and the newly elected AHAA officers, López-Varela, Marella, Jessica Pantanini, AHAA treasurer and chief operating officer of Bromley, and Gisela Girard, AHAA secretary and president and COO of Creative Civilization – An Aguilar/Girard Agency, will begin implementing the platform launched by immediate past chairman Kravetz.. Under the new leadership, the association will continue to shift the focus of the industry’s message from the value of Hispanic marketing to the value of using specialized Hispanic agencies in marketing to Latino consumers.

“The Hispanic market is a strategic imperative for marketers that need to grow their business in the U.S. by building market share in the only and fastest growing market segment available,” said Bird, chairwoman of AHAA in her incoming remarks. There is perhaps no more important audience for AHAA to develop a better dialogue with than with chief marketing officers. In a hyper-competitive marketplace such as ours, broadening the scope of what makes a Latino Latino will inevitably double the size of the market Latino agencies are hired to reach.

“Our clients are increasingly expecting agencies to integrate strategic brand management, creativity and innovative channel planning – and to deliver big, game-changing ideas. We must deliver and it takes talented marketers across all communication disciplines. AHAAs education committee will create innovative training opportunities to continuously improve our skills while concurrently work to build our talent pool by helping young Latino students consider a career in Hispanic advertising: a compelling, challenging and rewarding job opportunity.

Continuing to serve on the board to help implement the organization’s plan are: Manuel E. Machado, CEO/co-chairman of MGS Communications; Cynthia McFarlane, executive vice president/managing director of Conill; Daisy Expósito-Ulla, partner, d expósito & partners; Patricia Gaitán, COO of Chambers Lopez & Gaitán, LLC; and Alex López Negrete, president/CEO of López Negrete Communications. Joining the board as newly elected directors are Joe Zubizarreta, chief operating officer of Zubi Advertising and Dilys Tosteson Garcia, president/CEO of La Agencia de Orci & Asociados.