Tweet This post originally appeared on MediaPost Engage:Hispanics. As the English speaking Latino audience grows in size and importance, how can marketers develop culturally relevant promotions for Hispanics? Bernardo Meza, Brand Manager for Wrigley Multicultural Marketing answered that question for me by describing his company’s Vive tu Música with 5 program, which aims to build awareness for 5 gum among bi-cultural Hispanic consumers. Following is our conversation about his work developing the online Latin rock and pop music talent competition. Why a music promotion? This

Tweet The following article first appeared on Fox News Latino. For years, Latinos have been held back by the “digital divide,” an information and technology gap relative to wealthier audiences that enjoy greater access to expensive computers and broadband connections. But two Internet trends will close that gap in 2011 and beyond: mobile and social media. In fact, experts predict that Hispanics could actually become leaders in adoption of new technology. Today, we still see a digital divide in home computer ownership. Six out of

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost. Last week, the leading advertisers convened in Miami for the ANA’s annual Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference. Historically, Hispanic, African-American and Asian-American marketers have fought hard for budgets even though demographic trends point to the fact that today’s minorities will become the majority in the coming decades. Hence, the summit was subtitled, “Multicultural – The New Mainstream.” One marketer who clearly sees the growth of multicultural audiences converging with the growth of social media is McDonald’s. Rick Wion,

Tweet Hispanic marketers and researchers often discuss the growth of the U.S. Hispanic audience and their acculturation process into American society. But rarely do we analyze the opposite side of the same coin. How do Caucasians learn the Spanish language, acquire information about Latinos’ native countries in Latin America, and “acculturate” to a more Hispanic America? As the Hispanic population grows, speaking Spanish becomes more useful than ever before. Many American students choose to study Spanish because of its usefulness here in the U.S. or

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Bicultural Hispanics often switch back and forth between Spanish and English. To learn why, Elizabeth Perez, the Digital Insights Analyst at ImpreMedia, describes why she chooses content in English or Spanish based on the cultural and political orientation of the news in each language. In-Language media is simply written in a consumer’s native language whereas in-culture media provides news from the perspective of the viewer’s native

Tweet While doing research about data visualization for my book (Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content), I stumbled upon the website Wordle, where you can build “beautiful word clouds.” According to the site, “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. After reading Felipe Korzenny’s and Lee Vann’s column about Hispanics’ adoption of social media relative to other ethnic demographics, a question came to mind: how will social networks affect the acculturation process among Hispanics? The ability to keep in touch with family and friends from countries-of-origin via email, Skype and online newspapers back home makes it easier than ever. Travel

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost. “Multicultural marketing is at the core of Western Union’s business,” said Gail Galuppo, EVP and CMO of Western Union at the ANA’s Multicultural conference recently.  She shared with the attendees how Western Union launched their new “Yes!” campaign in 22 languages across 200 countries with the goal of making a more emotional connection with their consumers. Ms. Galuppo says that “Yes! is a culture, especially among immigrants who hear a lot of “No.” Who is their target audience? 

Tweet This article originally appeared on MediaPost and is an early preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. How much do Mexicans spend annually on trips into the U.S.? Forty billion dollars annually, according to Jennifer Stefano, CEO of Border Billboard, who spoke at the Hispanic Retail 360 conference recently, citing a number of Scarborough and chamber of commerce studies.Do retailers credit this revenue toward a U.S. Hispanic audience or a foreign, Latino (Spanish-speaking) consumer? Either way,

Tweet With computer prices falling, Internet users skyrocketing and no borders on the Internet, how can marketers turn their international Spanish-language web site visitors into revenues? That is the question that Juan Tornoe and I will answer in our panel discussion at SXSW Interactive in 2010. Please submit your feedback, suggestions and vote for the panel here on SXSW’s panel picker: Some of the questions that we will answer include: 1. How do consumers cross geo-political boundaries to find, read about and buy what they