Management

This past week, we spent considerable time at the Hispanicize event in Miami Beach. The Hispanicize team needs to be commended for their ability to bring together Hispanic female bloggers from their owned and operated blogger network Latina Mom Bloggers.  The ladies were flown in and put up for a couple of days in fabulous Miami Beach for an all expenses paid soiree to create and demonstrate critical mass to entice advertisers.

The question is not whether Ethnic Consumers that are lumped for diversity purposes into the MULTICULTURAL BUCKET offer opportunities for marketers.  We all know the answer to that question. The question is whether there is a need or a purpose for having one agency that implements all aspects of a campaign that can then be called a MULTICULTURAL approach.

By Gonzalo López Martí / Atkins López Martí, LLC You started your own business. Welcome to the party. Face the music. And dance. You are on your own now. No more whining. No more excuses. No more finger pointing. You only have yourself to blame. Some assorted pieces of advice.

The AHAA Conference began this week in Miami and I assume you have heard that they have expanded their Board of Directors and added an Advisory Board that include clients, media and research executives, besides just ad agency executives.
They also do not want to call the organization the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, they want to be called AHAA – The Voice of Hispanic Marketing. A new COMPASS! I have high HOPES. This new change will impact the scope and breath of AHAA as we lead into 2013.

Several months ago in October of 2011 I wrote an op-ed piece titled “I have high hopes for the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies”.

It was necessary to write last year’s op-ed piece since I felt after working with AHAA for fifteen years, the momentum and directionality of our Industry’s trade-marketing association did not represent the needs or that it was not a compass for our Industry. 

Last month I attended one of the best parties in L.A.  No, I’m not talking about the Oscars.  I’m talking about the Brisk Bodega-Star Wars Cantina party, presented by Brisk Tea. Now ostensibly the party was intended to present and offer party-goers samples of Brisk Tea.  But by partnering up with LucasFilm, Brisk was able to offer another element of intrigue at its party: an exhibition of art conceived by emerging, young artists, and based on the iconic characters from the “Star Wars” film.
 

By Jose Villa / Sensis We hear the term “multicultural” a lot. Marketers, academics, and industry leaders love to talk about multicultural groups and the growth of America’s multicultural population — the various minority groups, including Hispanic, African-American, Asian, and “other” (Middle Eastern, European, South Asian, etc.) that are rapidly expanding in size and influence.

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.

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.