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 Which region will provide growth for your business in 2011? Paul Gunning, the Chief Executive Officer at Tribal DDB, recently told me, “Latin America is another China” because it has “millions of consumers with rising purchasing power.” A number of recent articles support that claim: This article from Forbes – Forget China, Look To Latin America – highlights that, “with inflation a concern in the Far East, commodity and consumer-driven economies like Brazil and Chile may be 2011′s biggest winners.” It goes on to

Tweet Recently, I read two books on innovation with two entirely different approaches. The first, Change by Design, was a disappointment even though it is the better known of the two. It actively sells the concept of innovative design. The second, The Victorian Internet, provides greater insights into the process of innovation and the pitfalls of new technologies through a historical context. It tells “the remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s on-line pioneers.” You would think that the book written by the

Tweet This article first appeared on MediaPost and is a preview of my forthcoming book Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content. Imagine moving to China for a career opportunity and taking your first trip to the grocery store to buy food. What do these packages say? How can I find the ingredients that I want to make the food that I know? Which brand is best? The bottom line: what do you recognize in the store? Nothing! It’s all in Chinese.

Tweet Following is a preview of Latino Link: Building brands online with Hispanic communities and content from Paramount Books. A few weeks ago, while having a very American lunch of cheeseburgers and milk shakes, my goddaughter Madeline, 11, and her brother Ricardo, 13, asked me, “so, what’s your book about Uncle Joe?” “Well, it’s about how families like yours use the Internet and what is the best ways for companies to communicate with people who speak Spanish,” I responded. Madeline and Ricardo speak Spanish with

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 past Thursday, I attended in the IAB Mexico’s annual event – IAB Conecta – and learned about Mexico´s online market and some insightful Internet trends overall. These include: 1. YouTube currently has about 300 million users globally and is growing 80% year-over-year 2. YouTube users upload 8 hours of video every 60 seconds, according to speaker Mitch Joel (my friend Pablo Slough actually corrected this statistic saying it is equal to 10 hours of video every 60 seconds, which is equal to 52,000

Tweet Interesting news yesterday in the WSJ and the Silicon Alley Insider about Google moving in on ComScore’s and Nielsen’s terf. With Google having their hands in Google Analytics and all of its user data from search, it’s no wonder that they are offering a new product – Ad Planner – which is currently open to beta users by invite only. The need for tools measuring online audiences is very clear. Server side data often reports that sites get double the traffic that ComScore and

Tweet This article originally appeared on iMediaConnection on Cinco de Mayo and even though the 5th of May has passed, the article provides (I hope) a comprehensive overview of best practices in marketing to US Hispanics online and how marketers can take advantage of some of the new targeting technology. Happy Cinco de Mayo! Do you know what it means? Has it become the “Hallmark Holiday” for marketing to U.S. Hispanics? Since today raises many questions and challenges about marketing to U.S. Hispanics, let’s use