Think Multicultural

This is kind of a funny example of how the old school advertising industry doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with new advertising technologies and models. Advertising Age (started in 1930, according to Wikipedia) has been the voice of advertising and media for years. However, I and a lot of people like me don’t read magazines anymore. I don’t even really read websites anymore. I get most of my information from RSS feeds served through Google Reader. AdAge’s RSS feeds are a disaster. The feed for the Big Tent blog doesn’t really work – rarely updates, and doesn’t include most of the posts. The Hispanic news isn’t Hispanic news – the feed is exactly the same as the main page feed. And none of the feeds has advertising in them.*

Maybe AdAge should look into a new RSS engine, and maybe take a look at the feed for Juan Tornoe’s blog to see how to do RSS advertising.

* Neither does the feed for TM, but nobody makes their living on this thing, it’s just an informal outlet for whatever is on our minds.

Those of you who subscribe to or have read Hispanic Market Weekly are familiar with a regular report they do on Hispanic advertising activity in different industries. They call them “Industry Snapshots” and they are great reports, full of interesting, insightful and useful information for anyone interested in Hispanic marketing.

In addition to listing out the major players in each industry and tracking their Hispanic marketing programs, the snapshots include a chart breaking down their media spend by media, including print, television, and radio. Typically, they even go into more detail, for instance breaking out print spend into local newspapers and national magazines, etc.

Everytime I read these these reports, I am hopeful that the next one will also include online ad spend. Unfortunately, they never do.

I’m wondering what is going on here? While I understand that some industries will have very little activity online, others, such as Auto, Insurance, and Entertainment are spending significant dollars online. I mean, we are spending a lot online for our clients in industries such as Government, Healthcare, and Utilities (and those aren’t even big ad spend industries).

I know the publishers, like Terra, Univision, Batanga, etc. are willing to share some information. Maybe we need an industry trade group to collect the data? Whatever it is, it needs to happen soon, as I feel the lack of information is holding back Hispanic spend online.

We all know how it works in this business, Target isn’t going to start spending online until they see that Wal-Mart is investing heavily in the space. Let’s get them the information they need to start spending online.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article ($) about how Hispanics are key to the upcoming presidential primaries and how the leading candidates are reaching out to them.

This is the key part: “With Super Tuesday looming as a potential make-or-break day for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, strategists for Mrs. Clinton are reinforcing efforts to woo Latinos, who could swing results in key states.”