Tweet I watched this presentation on TED.com months ago from photographer, Phil Borges about the loss of endangered languages and cultures and I couldn’t get it out of my head. The photos, personal stories, and statistics that Borges shared blew me away, especially the opening paragraph: A fact came out of MIT, couple of years ago. Ken Hale, who’s a linguist, said that of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth right now, 3,000 aren’t spoken by the children. So that in one generation, we’re going

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Larry Hernandez oftentimes wears a cowboy hat when he sings his brand of Northern Mexican Ranchera music. He uploads videos to his YouTube channel from his concerts or his daily, personal life when he walks around the towns he visits, doing something funny. In this manner, he constantly keeps in touch with his audience. Fans return to his YouTube channel often to watch his videos and

Tweet While doing research for my book – Latino Link – I ran into one of my old co-workers and friends by happenstance, Tamara de Anda, during a trip to Mexico. Here we are at Café de Carlo in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City. She is one of my favorite bloggers/tweeters in Spanish who writes by the name “Plaqueta.” Her blogging style reminds me of Seinfeld in that she writes about “nothing,” or really everyday life in Mexico City – the places she goes,

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Miguel “Mike” Ramirez, one of the founders of MedioTiempo.com, tells me that their site was officially “born” on February 7, 2000. When it launched, the U.S. Hispanic market didn’t even enter their mind. They built Medio Tiempo for Mexico. Back then, only two options existed for Mexican-Americans to find news about Mexican soccer: the TV stations Univision and Telemundo. Typically, coverage for teams like Chivas, Pumas

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. Many U.S. Hispanic publishers and e-commerce sites find that when they launch a site in Spanish targeting U.S. Hispanics many Latin Americans find their site for a number of reasons: 1) Their site has been optimized for search and so other Spanish-speakers find the site 2) 136 million consumers read in Spanish online, most of whom live outside of the U.S. 3) Sites in the U.S.

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

Tweet Christine Webster-Moore, the VP of Business Initiatives at Best Buy, recently outlined three goals for how Best Buy wants to increase their sales among Hispanics and Latin Americans at the Hispanic Retail 360 conference: 1) We need to be more fluid in how we invite Spanish-language users to our web site including US Hispanics, Mexicans and visitors in our border stores. 2) We need to provide more creative ways to have our customers buy. We need to experiment more with programs like Flexicompras, our

Tweet Joe Crump, Group VP of Strategy and Planning at Razorfish, recently spoke at the IAB Mexico’s annual conference about his agency’s plans to expand into Latin America.  He shared a few digital success stories that can be brought to Latin America, most notably Obama’s digital marketing campaign and Terra, one of Razorfish’s clients.  You can download his presentation here. Why is Razorfish expanding in the region now? Latin America, he says, is stuck in an “old media” rut.  Online ad spending per user in