I got an email recently from AT&T asking if I knew all of the cool things that they do in the Hispanic market. I knew that they do Hispanic marketing because they run ads on the Admixture Hispanic channel, but I didn’t know much else, really. So they sent me a fact sheet.

According to the fact sheet:

AT&T has a lot of Hispanic employees, as well as lots of employees from other diverse ethnicities. They’ve been recognized as a top employer for minorities by the likes of DiversityInc, Hispanic Business Magazine, Fortune, and Latina Style Magazine. That seems pretty good.

AT&T actively pursues supplier diversity, including spending over $5 billion on procurement from diverse suppliers. That’s a lot of money.

AT&T gives money to Hispanic and other diversity initiatives. A whole lot of money. That also seems like a good thing.

Finally, AT&T actively pursues Spanish-speaking consumers by producing information including websites and brochures in Spanish. Right on.

So that does in fact seem like a lot of Hispanic outreach.

However – I suspect that AT&T has more than one motivation. On the one hand, they probably do want to be a good corporate citizen. In a climate where there are strong anti-immigrant voices, AT&T is reaching out to Hispanics as a welcome part of their corporate ecosystem, from suppliers to employees to customers. On the other hand, reaching out to Hispanics makes good business sense. AT&T is based in San Antonio, so it would be impossible for them not to see the changing face of America’s demographics. Hispanics are a large (almost $1 trillion) part of the US consumer base and the fastest growing part too.

For AT&T to sit there in San Antonio watching the new America develop before their eyes and not evolve with it would be terrible strategic thinking on their part.

So kudos to AT&T, not only for being a good corporate citizen, but for being smart enough to see which way the wind blows.

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