I think I’ve mentioned one of the Art Directors on my team is a rock star. So who better to interview Lucia Ballas-Traynor, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MTV’s new “Tr3s” network? Right on. It’s José.
And it’s an excellent show.
Want to know what MTV’s new plans are for this new youth-targeted channel? Want to know what’s up with the exploding Hispanic teen population? Tune in by visiting Latincast.net, scrolling to the end of the podcast list and downloading the MP4 file. (You might even find podcasts on other topics that are of interest to you on your scroll-down). They’re pretty much all hosted by José.
Lest there be doubt as to why I’m where I’m at (as opposed to shilling my talents blowing Smoke 2.0), here’s a roundup of this past week’s marketing stories regarding the growing power– and prominence– of the Hispanic market in the United States:
Spanish Language Media advertising grew 20.5 percent in the first half of 2006, versus 18.9 percent growth in online advertising and growth of 5.7 percent on network television. Where other media will continue to face declines, Hispanic media will grow.
In 2007, Hispanics are expected to have buying power reaching $863.1 billion, comprising 8.5 percent of the total consumer marketplace (versus 14.5 percent of the population), exceeding all other ethnic minorities. Expect your food, clothing, music and other entertainment choices to reflect it.
New Orleans is fast changing from a “Chocolate City” into a “Mocha City,” with Hispanics flooding in, digging in and pitching in– with excellent results for the city and the economy– and changing the complexion of the Gulf Coast, perhaps forever. And why not? Hispanics are the ones investing sweat-equity in the region. I’d stay, too.
And if New Orleans is a study in microeconomic trends, our society as a whole will be the case study in macroeconomics as the new generation of Hispanic children become primed to power the next cultural engine in the United States. Today, one in five people under the age of eighteen in the U.S. are of Hispanic descent, a 20 percent figure that’s expected to climb to 25 percent by 2020. Hispanics, today, also make up 20 percent of the population aged 20 to 34.
‘’In terms of that market that really defines popular culture, it’s getting Latinized much faster than the rest of the population,'’ Suro says.
That is of intense interest to U.S. companies.
‘’All of them are slowly waking up to the fact that moving forward, this is the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy,'’ says Marcel Suarez-Orozco, co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project and co-author of the book Children of Immigration.
“This is where the action will be in terms of new investment, new growth. So even though the attention is on immigrants, even if we seal the border tomorrow, the real growth will be in the second generation.'’
(Miami Herald)
You won’t hear the marketing blogger clique talk about it, though; they don’t get it, understand it, relate to it or acknowledge it. It’s another 400-pound (Spanish-speaking) gorilla sitting in their cluttered, wired, home “offices.”
And it makes me wonder how different the results would have been had New Line changed Samuel Jackson’s Snakes on a Plane line to read, “We’ve got chingón snakes on this chingón plane!”
The latest, greatest Latincast podcast from Dieste Harmel & Partners is on the topic of Hispanic teens.
More and more we’re seeing the “Latin-ization” of pop culture as Hispanics begin to flex their cultural muscle here in the United States, and when it comes to raw culture-bending strength, nothing matches the power of a gaggle of teens.
This week’s podcast combines the two, delving into the minds of Hispanic teens in order to find out what’s cool, hot, hip and, uh, happening.
Obviously, I am not one of those things.
Have a listen– you can find it, cleverly titled “Hispanic Teen Podcast,” at the very bottom of the list of podcasts found at LATINCAST.net, our repository of all things pod-i-licious.
One of the projects I was working on a while back has broken: a new home for Dieste Harmel & Partners’ Hispanic advertising and marketing podcast is born (so no more horribly long mac.com web address).
You can now find the podcast (all of them, actually) at LATINCAST.net
I think it deserves a visit, don’t you? Come on, you know you want to.
(Oh yeah, and I’ve just returned from Texarkana, so goodnight everyone.)
In the United States, where Mother’s Day falls on the second Sunday of May, the holiday is not as big as in Latin America, but it is increasingly attracting the attention of U.S. Hispanic marketers. Why? Simply, there are a lot of Hispanic moms. According to October 2005 data from the National Center for Health Statistics, Hispanic women gave birth to 23 percent of all the children born in the U.S.
(Emphasis, mine.)
The holiday has always been hella-big in Latin America (much, much more so than here in the US), but with rapidly changing demographics affecting marketing decisions, look for more efforts to get on board the Día de las Madres train.
It will make “consumer generated content” look like small papas… uh… potatoes.
First, I want to give a shout-out to Brainstorm9, an advertising blog in Brazil, for picking up on the release of our new Gatorade spot, “Skyscraper,” that I shot in downtown São Paulo. Agradecimentos, irmão!
Now on to business.
A new Podcast from Dieste Harmel & Partners, “Directo To The Point,” discusses the what, where, when, and hows of direct marketing to Hispanics. The moderator and guests are all fellow ad monkeys here at the agency. Have a listen.
You can find it on iTunes (search for “Dieste”) or by downloading it from our web.mac.com repository.
Hot on the news that no one listens to Podcasts, Dieste Harmel & Partners is pleased to release our latest, “Shooting Outside the US.”
It’s an extension of an earlier DHP Podcast, “Hispanic Spots on the Spot.” In this one, Aldo Quevedo (ECD), Alex Duplan (CD), Angel LaRiva (Producer) and I talk about the advantages and disadvantages of shooting outside the country. If you’ve ever considered doing such a thing, you might want to take a listen. Or not (according to the stats in the news article above, though we get plenty of mail from listeners). We recorded quite a bit on the subject– we shoot outside the country more often than within– and only a small portion made it into the podcast, so I’d expect another release on the same subject at some point in the future.
You can listen to it by clicking below, or you can find it on iTunes (search for “Dieste”) or by downloading it from our web.mac.com repository.
The file below is a .mp3 file. If you get it from iTunes or mac.com, it comes as a .mp4 file that’s loaded with additional graphics and whatnot.
I’m obviously back from Chicago. It was a long trip (in terms of late nights and late flights), but resulted in a good brainstorm session for the brand. It was also good in terms of learning the release of our second spot for Gatorade has been moved up in a significant way– a full two months earlier, in fact.
Separately, my team also learrned the recent radio we produced for 7-Eleven US has been picked up for air in an additional market after it was played (and loved) for their marketing team. Always a good thing.
The She Monkey returns from her conference in Boston on Sunday, so it looks like I’ll spend Saturday cleaning the casa and taking care of a sick pet (paid a $1,300 vet bill on Thursday). Hopefully I can get through my monkey chores and spend some quality time blogging from the front porch tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
If you work alongside Hispanics in a creative environment, you work in a space wherein spontaneous soccer games break out like cold sores inside an adult cineplex.
A new Podcast from Dieste Harmel & Partners, “True Fans Speak Up on World Cup Soccer,” has been released. The moderator and guests are all fellow ad monkeys (and all fellow creatives) here at the agency who eat, drink and cagar fútbol– er, soccer.
You can find it on iTunes (search for “Dieste”) or by downloading it from our web.mac.com repository.
A new Podcast from Dieste Harmel & Partners, “Growing Up Hispanic,” has been released. The moderator and guests are all fellow ad monkeys (two from creative and two from account service) here at the agency.
You can find it on iTunes (search for “Dieste”) or by downloading it from our web.mac.com repository.
Thanks to a post over at AdRants, I found a story that tells the tale of how a recent Volkswagen outdoor campaign has been pulled after receiving complaints that a word used in it, “cojones,” was offensive to Hispanics.
The outdoor boards were posted in Los Angeles and Miami, and it was in the Miami neighborhood of Little Havana that the complaints originated.
Before I go on, I want to make a couple of things clear. One, it is quite important to take into account cultural sensitivities when attempting to speak Spanish to a Hispanic target (or when placing media in Hispanic-heavy neighborhoods). General Market agencies will get it wrong more often than they get it right and, when in doubt, advertisers should call in an expert to help guide their marketing efforts. And, two, Miami shouldn’t be considered the bellwether anything for what is or is not culturally applicable to the Hispanic world at large, and especially for those Hispanics who reside in the United States.
A case in point:
A few years ago, I wrote a radio spot for a client, Washington Mutual, touting one of their new products. The gist of the radio spot was that a man owned a goose which he poked, prodded and tickled in attempting to get it to lay a golden egg. It never did, so instead he availed himself to the new Washington Mutual offering and everyone, man and goose, lived happily ever after.
You can listen to the “Goose” spot, here:
The spot aired in several Hispanic-heavy markets, including Miami. Within a few days, Washington Mutual began receiving calls from Little Havana stating that the spots were offensive. What possible offense could be taken from this spot?
In Cuba, you see, geese are a rarity and, on the island, the story has been changed to become the chicken that laid the golden egg.
We used a goose instead of a chicken. That was what the callers from Little Havana found so offensive.
Never mind that to just about every other Hispanic on the planet the story is about a goose, we had to pull the spot and re-record it using the story of a chicken. Forfuckssake.
You can hear the “Chicken” version, here:
My guess is the new Volkswagen boards that will go up in place of the “cajones” board will be found equally offensive by a Cuban ex-pat living in Little Havana, despite the fact Hispanics elsewhere will find them appealing (just as, no doubt, they did the original board), and the next round will come down as well.
So, yes General Market agencies, you should watch out for cultural sensitivities when playing with Spanish but, when it comes to your sounding board, go to Miami for the sun and sand and not for marketing advice.
EMT-Man: makethelogobigger isn't really correct. The protocol changes every year based on your level of certification, and whether you are working on...
michel: Glad to hear you, know you have been busy!!! Enjoy the Pubs and see ya when you get back!!!
I think I’ve mentioned one of the Art Directors on my team is a rock star. So who better to interview Lucia Ballas-Traynor, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MTV’s new “Tr3s” network? Right on. It’s José.
Lest there be doubt as to why 
