Hispanic Public Relations Association announces New Leadership for Next Phase of Growth

With new leadership comes new energy and ambition, making this a year for continued growth for the Hispanic Public Relations Association, Los Angeles chapter (HPRA-LA) as it announces the new incoming board and welcomes new members. With the new board, HPRA-LA will build upon strategic partnerships and strengthen its commitment to provide PR professionals and students the resources to thrive in this evolving Hispanic public relations industry.

“Our commitment to fostering key strategic partnerships and increasing our membership continue to be significant goals for the organization in 2012,” said Delia L. López, HPRA-LA president. “Building on our history and on our principle of serving as a resource to PR professionals, HPRA-LA will continue to be a platform for advancement and enrichment for those in Hispanic PR and those seeking expertise in the Hispanic market.”

HPRA-LA executive board members include:

o Delia L. López (President): bilingual Communications Consultant with more than 12 years of experience in the field of strategic public relations, having worked with large national and regional brands, and specializing in the Hispanic market.

o Jacqueline Quintanilla Aker (Vice President): senior vice president, Health & Multicultural Marketing at Edelman, has more than 12 years of experience leading award-winning campaigns for LIVESTRONG®, the California Department of Alcohol & Drug Programs and Nestle®.

o Leslie Smith (Secretary): senior vice president of Business Development and Marketing, Leslie is responsible for all new business opportunities at New American Dimensions, a Los Angeles based Marketing Research and Consulting Firm that focuses on multicultural research.

o Hilda Delgado (Treasurer): Western Region communications director for Coca-Cola Refreshments where she oversees and implements internal and external communications and public affairs campaigns for California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Hawaii.

HPRA-LA also welcomes the following board committee chairs:

o Programs – Chalena Cadenas, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
o Marketing – Mariluz Gonzalez, Vesper Public Relations
o Social Media Integration – Jose Xicohtencatl, Edelman
o Membership – Chuck Sifuentes, PR Consultant
o National Chapters – Stephen Chavez, Chavez Marketing & Communications
o Scholarship/College Outreach: Denisse Montalvan, Ketchum

In addition, HPRA-LA is strengthening its leadership with the addition of Oralia Michel, President of OMAGEN Marketing & PR, as senior advisor. Michel’s 30-year career in Hispanic marketing will provide expertise and thought leadership to expand programs and resources to Hispanic PR professionals. Michel, a seasoned PR practitioner and former journalist, believes the tenets of journalism are core skills that all communicators would be well served to embrace and practice, while keeping a pulse on the ever changing technology that makes marketing communications an exciting and always evolving profession.

“Public relations and marketing communications continue to evolve making our industry ever energizing,” says Michel. “Augmenting and forging new partnerships will enable HPRA to provide our members with the best learning from the best minds. Our members’ insights are also highly valuable and we will drive thought leadership that better serves the Hispanic market. In this era of integration, strategic messaging capabilities will continue to be king and we must be the leaders in delivering the right messages via the best channels.” For more information please visit http://www.hpra-usa.org

http://hispanicad.com/cgi-bin/news/newsarticle.cgi?article_id=33863

Why English-language content for Latinos is the future

By Leslie Berestein Rojas (MultiAmerican). It’s becoming difficult to keep track of how many media companies have made the same announcement lately: We’re launching a website/television network/social media campaign for a Latino audience, but in English.

Just in the last year-plus we’ve seen the launch of English-language digital ventures likeFox News Latino and HuffPost Latino Voices. A partnership between the latter and AOL has been involved in launching Spanish-English hyperlocal Patch Latino sites.

This week brought reports that Univision and Disney were working together to produce a 24-hour news channel for Latinos in English. It also brought the launch of Voxxi, a English-language website for “acculturated Latinos” headed by an editor from Spain’s EFE news agency. It’s one of a host of English-language sites, some more professional than others, that have launched in the past couple of years with the goal of reaching, well, acculturated Latinos.

There are other ventures in the works, most with an emphasis on digital content. What gives, and why now? Giovanni Rodriguez is a social-technology and marketing expert with Deloitte Consulting who studies and writes about the Latino media market. In a short piece last week forForbes, he wrote about how media companies are “beginning to gain a finer grasp of the Latino population,” including their language and engagement preferences. Here, he provides details.

M-A: The trend started as a trickle a few years ago, but now it’s huge: Media companies providing content for Latinos, but in English. Why is this happening now?

Rodriguez: What’s happening is that media companies and the businesses that support them – i.e., brands – are beginning to understand both the opportunities and complexities of the Latino digital market.

The opportunities stem from the fact that Latinos currently outperform most other ethnic groups in digital technology adoption. More of us – as a percentage of our general group – congregate on social networks, buy smartphones, click on ads, etc. The complexities come from the sheer diversity of the Latino market. There are huge cultural differences between Cubans in Miami and Puerto Ricans in New York. And some of us prefer English, while others prefer Spanish.

But the growing numbers of Latinos who prefer English is fascinating to both media companies and brands. A language that not only binds young Latinos – the future of America – from different homelands but also with the general population, well, that’s a powerful tool for reaching a new population at scale.

M-A: The decision to reach out to this audience is marketing-driven, of course. How did advertisers come about their awareness of this audience? How much more attractive is the English-speaking Latino audience as a media market than the Spanish-speaking audience? And what took so long? We’ve been around a while.

Rodriguez: True, it does feel like the interest in English has come all of a sudden. But in fact, the market has been moving in this direction over the last few years. Fox launched its English-language site Fox News Latino back in 2010, just weeks before the mid-term congressional elections. And there were several, though less visible, experiments in English-language content before that.

Still, there is a new development that’s worth noting. The most recent launches – by Univision, Disney and NBC – are in part the outcome of the new attention that Latino digital is enjoying by digital influencers. The big marketing trade publications are all following the emerging power of Latinos online and media companies are taking notice.

As to the appeal, we know we can speak to each other in English. Whatever can’t do in Spanish, we will do in English. It’s easier to connect. You can speak Spanish sometimes, but you speak English so you can connect with the larger world. There are a lot of Latinos who want to connect with the larger world and on the Internet, that larger world is in English. They can play in the larger world and still remain Latino.

I think you just have greater reach, too, because there are other people who are interested in Hispanic topics. Still, it’s important to remember that the Latino media market is not monolithic. There’s a huge Latino population that prefers Spanish, and they are just as savvy as their English-preferring brethren. Ariel Coro’s Tu Tecnología is a good example. He reaches a very broad audience that’s interested in tech products and innovation.

M-A: You wrote in Forbes recently of the appeal of Spanglish. Some outside this audience might object to it, but you mentioned that it’s appealing for “people who might prefer English but like to remind themselves and others where they are from.” ¿Puedes explicar? Is there an authenticity component?

Rodriguez: As we all know, there are lots of Latinos who easily navigate from English to Spanish, from Spanish to English. It’s natural for them. But it’s painfully obvious when Spanglish is unnatural. I wouldn’t advise a marketer to speak in Spanglish unless it made sense (the right message, the right messenger, and the right context). But it always makes sense for media companies to create content in the language that’s most compelling to consumers.

Increasingly, that language is neither pure Spanish, nor pure English, but something in between. For many of us, being Latino means being in between, so it’s fitting that Spanglish emerge as our lingua franca.

M-A: With so many media entities competing for this audience now, there will be some who have the magic formula and some who don’t. What do you think will be key to success? And can you name some ventures that are succeeding (and some that need improvement)?

Rodriguez: Success starts with recognition of a fact that the entire media industry is finally beginning to accept: It is no longer in control. To paraphrase social media pioneer Dan Gillmor, the people “formerly known as the audience” is now in charge.

But there are things you can do to leverage the trend, rather than oppose it. Focus on topics that matter to Latinos. Ask them to create and share content. Better yet, get them engaged in setting a strategy for your organizations.

I don’t like heaping praise on media companies who “get it,” but the trend toward enabling non-professional contributors to extend the long tail of content is very encouraging. IMO, we’re just beginning to experiment with this model, and that favors those who learn fast, fail fast, and adjust. In the meantime, there are plenty experiments in motion – like the ones you note at the top of this Q&A – that we all can learn from, modify, or subvert.

These are the salad days of Latino digital media. Enjoy.

http://nglc.biz/2012/02/22/why-english-language-content-for-latinos-is-the-future/

Google Increases Focus On Hispanic Market

Google is accelerating its focus on building out YouTube channels for the Hispanic market through partnerships with independent and traditional media companies, such as Telemundo, and Univision. The consumer segments range from retail to automotive to consumer products to technology.

The project, which began last year, supports five channels, including ClevverTV, Tutele, Nuevon and Werevertumorro. Some of the channels in Spanish have English subtitles.

Media providers have begun to focus on content for bicultural Latinos in hopes of attracting a variety of demographics, including second-and-third generation Hispanics. Lopez said this year he expects the majority of online growth to come from the Latino market. “About 95% of the teen population growth online in the U.S. will be Latino,” said Mark Lopez, head of U.S. Hispanic audience at Google.

Last year, Google created a team led by Lopez to focus on serving the 50 million U.S. Hispanics who have about $1 trillion in spending power; 30 million are online. The focus supports content across desktops, tablets, smartphones, and TVs.

Lopez said Hispanic consumers have become much more tech savvy. About 55% use search engines to research tech-related information and rely on media consumption to make decisions. Online advertising effectively drives 61% of Hispanic tech shoppers to make in-store purchases, for example.

Citing Nielsen numbers, Lopez said this year streaming video should grow 23% on the Web, as well 15% on mobile. Overall, Americans spend more than 33 hours per week watching video across screens, according to Nielson.

While Google could opt into a subscription-based model for Hispanic channels in the future, today the offering remains an “open, ad-supported model,” Lopez said.

http://nglc.biz/2012/02/15/google-increases-focus-on-hispanic-market/

Cosmetics Executive Women agree: Hispanic Consumers must be a Priority

I recently joined Linda Levy, vice president of Merchandise Marketing for Cosmetics and Fragrances at Macy’s and Alexandra Vegas, director of the Multicultural Business Development Organization at Procter & Gamble, at a Cosmetics Executive Women (CEW) event aimed at marketing beauty to the Hispanic consumer. At this New York City gathering of retail, beauty and cosmetic professionals, my fellow panelists and I offered insights and strategies on how to drive sales with Hispanic consumers.

“We really need to get to know this customer,” Levy stated. “This is our biggest opportunity for the next couple of years.” Levy emphasized that communicating with Latinas in Spanish was a key strategy to court this valuable shopper.

At the event, I emphasized how Hispanic women and men over-index in terms of beauty consumption and overall attitudes. A Univision study on Latina beauty shows that 45 percent of Hispanic women believe outer beauty is a reflection of inner beauty, a trait instilled at a young age by beauty-conscious Latina mothers. The study showed that Hispanic women feel outer beauty empowers them and gives them confidence to face the world. Some other key findings of the study include: wearing makeup and looking good is essential to 69 percent of Hispanic women compared with 46 percent of the general population; 81 percent of Hispanic women often use multiple products in a typical day and Latinas often search for natural ingredients vs. 66 percent of the general population; 32 percent of Latinas are also willing to spend more on beauty products and equate brands that are expensive with brands that work vs. 19 percent of the general population. Latinas are most likely to say: “My face has no budget.”

The CEW panel also addressed Latino’s grooming habits, revealing that Hispanic men associate grooming products with personal confidence and attractiveness. They also believe that looking good is a way to get ahead in life and at work.

In fact, Hispanic men spend $8 more per month than non-Hispanic men for hair styling products, moisturizer and fragrances. Other distinguishing factors that set Hispanic men apart, include eyebrow grooming and eye cream use. Additionally, 34 percent of Latinos shower twice a day compared to 16 percent of the general population of men, while 64 percent of Hispanic men say they are “scent seekers” compared to 31 percent if the general population of men.

The study also found that both Hispanic men and women say they feel “invited by a brand” that speaks to them directly. Hispanic consumers are hungry for education and information on the products that fit their specific needs. Retailers that want to court this consumer can do so with Spanish-language advertisements, direct mail and bilingual in-store demonstrations. Beauty imagery and talent should also be reflective of the U.S. Hispanic face.

Macy’s has certainly taken this lead. With more than 800 stores, many located in heavily Hispanic-populated areas, the retailer has made Latinos a priority. That is a smart move as Hispanics represent anywhere from a quarter to half the population in key sales markets.

P&G’s multicultural expert Alexandra Vegas told the CEW audience that at P&G they have found that Latina faces can work across both English- and Spanish-language audiences. To this end, they are now using Eva Mendes as the face of U.S. Pantene, Sofia Vergara for Cover Girl and Jennifer Lopez for Gillette Venus.

Vegas noted: “If brands are serious about marketing to the Hispanic consumer, it has to be a long-term commitment. It should be made part of the early design stage for new products, and be made a priority through each process including in store elements and packaging.”

The points expressed by the panelists during the CEW event and the enthusiasm received by the nearly 300 guests prove that Hispanic consumers have been recognized by manufacturer and retailer alike as a critical engine of growth in the U.S. for decades to come. To read WWD’s coverage on the CEW event, “Speaking the Language of the Latin Consumer”.

http://hispanicad.com/cgi-bin/news/newsarticle.cgi?article_id=33751

http://hispanicad.com/cgi-bin/news/newsarticle.cgi?article_id=33751