Business

By Joe Castro – Zubi Advertising I never sleep better than during the holidays that now seem a faded distant memory. The new year has brought with it the reality of potentially great political change on the horizon, and with all the political rhetoric a reawakening to the disturbing truth of how Hispanics are viewed by many other Americans in this country.

It has been a while since I approached all of you through El Blog at HispanicAd.com. There are reasons.  We accept them, have come to terms with them and own them. We are invigorated by our engaged readers, exclusive blue-chip list of US Hispanic clients and all of our colleagues in the Industry that support the contributions we bring forth to helping inform and promote the US Hispanic advertising, marketing, public relations and media Industries.

By Joe Zubizarreta / Zubi Advertising – Zubination Having just watched the pilot for Rob Schneider’s new show, Rob, I am totally disgusted by the way CBS has portrayed a Mexican-American family in an attempt to lure Latinos to general market television. The only thing I can think of is that they wanted to use every stereotype in the book to generate non-Hispanic viewership.

As many of you have seen in the movie 2012 and have heard from scholars based on their interpretation of Mayan culture and the Mayan calendar, the world will end December 2012. Doomsday is upon us in 355 days on December 21, 2012.

On December 14, organizers of one of the nation’s premier live music events, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, revealed the lineup for its 2012 extravaganza. Presented by Shell, “Jazz Fest” has become a two-weekend celebration of the best in American music. It has far outgrown its own name, and over the years has welcomed headline rock acts to the big stages.

It’s Ho! Ho! Ho! time, party time and looking to next year.  So with that said, here are my Top 10 pet peeves for 2012. 1- Professionals in our Industry need to understand the need to return calls and e-mails.  It is just proper business etiquette, even if there is not an opportunity to do business.  People need communication and have to deliver communication back to their people.  Two-way street.  Return your own calls, don’t have you assistant do it.  Nobody, and I mean nobody is that important or that busy.

‘m still not sure why Ad Age felt compelled to give a voice to hate. I mean, how else do you explain their decision to invite a bona fide prophet of hate to their upcoming “Media Evolved” conference?  Glenn Beck may be doing something interesting in media (according to Ad Age) but he’s still a racist.

I recently read an article in another of the Latin American Market focused trade journals that interviewed a US Hispanic Marketing Director at the client level and two mayor New York Hispanic Agency based Media Planning Executives with most of their experience in mainstream advertising and Latin America respectively to give their opinions about the US Hispanic Market.

As of late I’m hearing in Hispanic communications circles much ado about whether or not marketers should pay Latino bloggers for posting brand-related content, product reviews, etc. While this topic has been fully addressed in mainstream circles, the issues take on greater complexities in the Latino blogosphere.

TV can do a lot of great things for brands but it can also make you impotent–and I can assure you that I did not intend to spell “important.”  And that is what one is led to conclude after reading some of the reports coming out of last week’s beer distributors’ convention in Las Vegas.