In April I had the opportunity to attend, speak at, and sponsor the 3rd annual Hispanicize 2012 event. Hispanicize has quickly grown into a premier event for the new Hispanic social world – the intersection of business and Hispanic media, advertising, film, culture and social media. I have had the unique vantage point of having been intimately involved with the event since its inception in Dallas back in April 2010 (originally billed the Hispanic PR and Social Media conference). 2012 was a real coming of age for the event, with over 700 attendees, 43 major brand sponsors, and 4 full days of presentations, panel discussions, and keynotes from thought leaders from around the

Hispanic industry – including advertising, film, media, and brands.

In many ways Hispanicize has become the epicenter of Hispanic media and marketing innovation – an annual gathering of Hispanic social media innovators, brands investing in new ways to tap into the Latino market, and industry thought leaders discussing the future of the business of Latinos, Inc.

Latinos, Inc. is the name of a seminal book published in 2001 by Arlene Davila that provides an in-depth look at the history and state of Hispanic media and marketing and the corporate interests driving the very big business of media, marketing, and selling to Hispanics living in the US. The term “Latinos, Inc.” appropriately and powerfully conveys the large and powerful interests that have helped create a multi-billion industry – namely the big media companies, the Hispanic advertising agencies, and corporations that drive the industry. Hispanicize 2012 got me thinking about the future of Latinos, Inc.

What impressed me the most about Hispanicize 2012 was the people I had the chance to meet. At most marketing industry conferences (which I go to my fair share of), you’ll meet a lot of industry-types, most of which are employees working at large brands, agencies, or media companies. But the crowd at Hispanicize 2012 was decidedly different. While there was a fair share of the aforementioned industry types, my anecdotal experience was that the majority of attendees were entrepreneurs. New media entrepreneurs – “Emprendedores” – comprised of Hispanics and non-Hispanics alike who are passionate about their future vision of Latinos, Inc.

To give you a better sense of the “Emprededores” I met in and around Hispanicize 2012, most fit into one of the following categories:
• Bloggers who were committed to making blogging their business
• New media publishers – people launching some type of digital content play
• Curators and aggregators
• Hispanic original content producers and creators – filmmakers, webisode producers, etc/

The commonality was that all these “Emprededores” were focused on new media, content or creative platforms for engaging U.S. Hispanics. And interestingly, most were not focused on Spanish language — but instead the powerful and oft discussed issue of culture.

As a seasoned entrepreneur myself, I understand the grim market reality that many of the “Emprendedores” I met will not survive. However, the sheer number of them, and their passion, made me think that they will have a huge impact on what Hispanic media and marketing will look like in the near future. They will change Latinos, Inc. in profound ways.

I’ve written about this before – particularly from the perspective of how the Hispanic media landscape will look radically different from the Univision-Telemundo or TV-Radio duopolies we’ve come to know and expect embody Latinos, Inc. Being the geek that I am, I got to thinking of a formula to illustrate the “Emprendedores” impact on Latinos, Inc. I came up with the following formula:

 

(Growth in Hispanic population + digital technology)   X   number of Emprendedores   = fundamentally transformed Latinos, Inc

 

I am very interested to see if my formula will turn out to be accurate. I’ll definitely be at Hispanicize 2013 to see firsthand.

This entry is filed under video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.