News

By Gonzalo López Martí@LopezMartiMiami

• Apple launched the Apple Watch with big fanfare last week.
• In the meantime it is still wiping off the egg on its face after some media outlet recently reported about its dismal diversity track record.
• It just so happens that the kingdom of the late Steve Jobs rarely hired individuals who are not male and white for its managerial ranks.
• Apparently a few Asian males had managed to percolate into the upper middle echelons of its payroll but that’s about it.
• Tim Cook, CEO of the Cupertino giant, had to apologize publicly for his employer’s human resources inclinations.
• Ipso facto, the company put its HR & PR machinery in overdrive and announced a string of multicultural, gender unbiased recruitments.

FCB Chicago announces international advertising executive and FCB veteran Walter Boza has joined the agency as SVP, strategic planning director. Boza hails from FCB Caracas, where he was general manager of the Venezuelan agency.

Guitar Center has awarded media agency Starcom USA its US planning, buying, analytics and human experience strategy business following a competitive pitch.

The Latin Recording Academy, Eventus and Univision announced that Conjunto Primavera, J alvarez, J Balvin, Los Rieleros del Norte, Los Tucanes de Tijuana, Noel Torres, and Voz de Mando will headline the 2014 Latin GRAMMY Street Parties.

Clear Channel announced that it has become iHeartMedia, reflecting the company’s success in becoming a one-of-a-kind multi-platform media company with unparalleled reach and impact.

This is historical on so many levels for Latin American and US-based Hispanic agencies alike.  It reaffirms the benefit of being a little fish in a big pond, driving global depth through cultural empathy.    By Gabriela Alcantara-Diaz, Founder, President of G ADMarketing Communication, Inc.

Marketers believe that their organizations are customer-centric and that their customers would agree. Unfortunately, marketers also reveal that this might be wishful thinking as lackluster ratings in organizations’ ability to listen, respond and effectively engage with customers in an agile, personalized manner fall well below average.

An outright majority of marketing professionals worldwide plan to increase their spending on brand awareness in the next 12 months, according to research conducted for eMarketer in August 2014 by InsightExpress—compared with just over four in 10 who said they would be spending more on demand generation.

Spanish-language broadcast network MundoFox announced that it is now available to Time Warner Cable digital subscribers in the New York metro area.

The project is a move to transform La Opinión into a multimedia brand that will serve the Hispanic community of California through all platforms – from print to mobile – with new and revamped content offerings, an improved look and a greatly enhanced reader experience for this iconic brand.

Consumers still choose brick-and-mortar locations when they want to get pretty.

Tiesto, Skrillex, Calvin Harris, David Guetta, Afrojack and Avicii are not household names to anyone 35 years old and over. Skrillex and Afrojack may sound like appliance names or an over the counter hair gel to older folks. But to Millennials (generally defined as Americans born between 1982 and sometime in the early 2000′s), these Electronic Dance Music (EDM) DJs are celebrities producing music that is defining and giving an identity to their generation.

Marketing itself hasn’t changed, but the world around it has. Great marketing will always be great marketing because it is borne of an insight, has a strong idea inside it, a clear sense of who it’s for and a pathway to creating demand and commercializing it effectively.

Heading into the 2014 elections, much of the conventional wisdom suggests that Latino voters are unlikely to affect outcomes. Most notably, except for Colorado, there are no competitive U.S. Senate races where Latino voters are positioned to be influential.  By David Damore / Latino Decisions

Warc has revealed the top brands and advertisers – brand owners – from the Warc 100 database, which tracks performance in effectiveness and strategy competitions.

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message” to suggest that the medium in which a message or communication is delivered many times influences or overshadows the message itself. Thus, the fact that a politician’s speech is broadcast on television has a bigger impact on how an audience receives it than the message of the speech itself.

With increased demand from existing and new clients for Hispanic programming, Alison Brod has brought Adriana Lopez on board as Director of Multicultural Relations.

US millennial women make up a huge group that is almost impossible to characterize. For one thing, the age range covers those still in high school all the way through women approaching their mid-30s. And they are a more ethnically diverse generation than any that has come before, according to a new eMarketer report, “Millennial Women: How Their Social Network Usage, Shopping Habits and Personal Finances Add Up.”

Carat published its updated forecasts for worldwide advertising expenditure in 2014 and 2015, with market optimism demonstrated through strong global and regional forecasts.

Results showed US Hispanic device ownership skews higher than the non-Hispanic US audience on a full range of connected devices, including smartphone, tablet, OTT, laptop, and smart TV, while leading the market in multi-tasking and mobile content consumption.