Lopez Negrete Communications scores double WIN at 2012 ARF Ogilvy Awards.

Lopez Negrete Communications, Inc. won the Gold in the “Multicultural” category at the American Research Federation (ARF) 2012 David Ogilvy Awards ceremony on March 28 in New York City for its “Enciendete FiOS” campaign launched for the agency’s largest client, Verizon Telecom. This is the fourth year that the Multicultural Award category has been offered by the ARF in this competition. Lopez Negrete won the Gold for the first two years the category was created, first for Bank of America and subsequently for Wal-Mart Stores, both long-standing legacy clients of the agency.

“We consider this is an important award because it once again illustrates our keen ability to unearth and activate relevant consumer insights that lead us to the development of solid strategy and powerful creative executions that tangibly deliver on our client’s business goals,” said Alex Lopez Negrete, president, CEO and CCO. “I could not be any more proud of this team. This was not an easy assignment, and they unlocked many secrets about the rapidly evolving Latino technology consumer.”

The research efforts informed the development of a strategy, target segmentation, and, ultimately, a comprehensive campaign that drove product understanding and awareness, encouraged the purchase decision among a value-conscious target, and exposed them to the FiOS experience in culturally relevant ways. The efforts were implemented in two separate waves. The first wave of research yielded the foundation of the new FiOS target, allowing the agency to explore their needs, wants and adoption barriers as they related to technology for communication and entertainment purposes. The second wave was a comprehensive phased research plan designed to understand how to position FiOS among this target in order to increase awareness and drive acquisition.

Lopez Negrete is no stranger to the ARF Ogilvy Award winner’s stage: The agency has won three out of four Gold awards in the Multicultural category. However, most notable was the additional recognition the agency gained by receiving the Award for Research Achievement for demonstrating extraordinary success solving a critical business challenge. The Research Achievement Award, as bestowed upon the agency by the American Research Federation, is considered in the industry the highest research honor an agency can earn.

“The Ogilvy Award celebrates the critical role that research has in unveiling the yet untold advertising stories and, better yet, the most compelling way to connect to our target. One of the most satisfying things about the “Enciendete FiOS” campaign has been to see the positive impact this campaign has had on quantitative business performance metrics. The other is that it’s clearly the result of a fully integrated body of work, all born from the same strategy that contains mass media, digital/interactive, events, retail and community relations elements – yet another example of how the secret of Hispanic marketing is in touching the consumer in a channel agnostic, seamless manner,” said Eugenia Archetti, research director of Lopez Negrete Communications.