However, anyone who has been paying attention to the Hispanic advertising industry in the last 3 years knows that things have started to change, as two forces have emerged:

1) So called “general market” agencies have created Hispanic advertising teams or departments within their agencies to pursue this specialty advertising work

2) Some clients have begun to consolidate their general market and Hispanic assignments with a single agency – usually with general market agencies (but with ethnic shops in a few rare occasions)

The trends are obviously not positive for Hispanic ad agencies, as they see big agencies “crowding” into their space and their role increasingly diminished.

The trends playing out in the Hispanic advertising industry appear similar to those that have taken place more generally in the ad agency business as new disciplines have emerged over the last few decades. Every couple of years, a new discipline has emerged – whether it was direct response in the late 70s / early 80s or digital in the late 90s – that has had a significant impact on the ad business. With the emergence of each new discipline, another cycle has taken place: as the new disciplines emerged, specialist agencies initially arose to address them. However, over time, these new disciplines were “integrated” into larger agency offerings, and the specialist agencies disappeared or were absorbed into larger agencies.

Yet every once in a while, major tectonic shifts have occurred that represented much more than the addition of a new discipline to the ad agency repertoire. The emergence of TV in the 1950’s marked the first big tectonic shift of the modern ad agency age, ushering in the “Mad men” era that focused advertising on the “big idea,” based on emotional advertising broadcast to the masses using network TV. I would argue that the second wave of digital media (the first one came in the late 90′s with the initial “dot com” boom), ushered in by social media in the early 2000’s marked the latest tectonic shift in the ad business – forcing ad agencies to fundamentally change their focus towards two-way, pull-focused marketing, leveraging connected consumers as critical agents in their ad programs.

So is Hispanic advertising, and multicultural advertising more generally, simply a new discipline, like direct response, that larger agencies will simply “bolt-on” to their service offering?

Or is Hispanic and multicultural advertising a tectonic shift that will force agencies to significantly change their approach to advertising?

I would argue the latter.

As the demographics of the U.S. rapidly change (as the Census data clearly show), the model of an ad agency that focuses on some amorphous, non-ethnic “general market” will have to evolve… and rapidly.

And I don’t think “bolting on” a Hispanic team or a multicultural department to a large agency will cut it. That’s a lot like a creating a digital group within a traditional ad agency.

What do you think?

(an edited version of this article originally ran on MediaPost’s Engage Hispanic blog on 8/4/2011)

As I was scrolling through about 40-50 names (of people I didn’t actually know), I was struck by how many of the names that came up were Hispanics. Literally, there were somewhere in the vicinity of 75% Hispanics surnames (and names). The other 25% were evenly split among Caucasians, Asians and African-Americans.

I’ve always felt that there are all sorts of untapped opportunities for B2B marketers, brands targeting affluent consumers, and recruiters to reach Hispanics on platforms like LinkedIn. But interestingly, no one ever brings up LinkedIn in the context of Hispanic marketing. In fact, it’s never discussed, and the same goes for African American, Asian and other multicultural marketing. Facebook and Twitter always get all the attention.

I know our agency has used Linkedin with great success for financial service and government clients.

Maybe Linkedin’s big IPO will bring more attention to the professional social networking powerhouse. The attention would definitely be well deserved.

First, some general impressions and takeaways from the conference:
- It’s amazing how many people either make a living from blogging and twitting or use social media as their primary marketing tool
- The real estate industry is way ahead of other small business industries when it comes to using social media to grow their businesses
- There is an entire “sub-culture” of bloggers / twitterers complete with celebrities and household names I had never heard of!
- There were a lot of brands and media companies fully taking advantage of this “sub-culture” to grow their business – including FatBurger, the U.S. Army, and Bud Light.

Now, a couple of thoughts regarding multicultural blogging and social media. As I mentioned, I moderated a panel discussing the role of multicultural bloggers in the social media world and their influence on multicultural marketing in specific. First of all, there were some very interesting insights that emerged from our panelists regarding their respective communities. Our discussion was much more about how Hispanic, African-American, Asian and GLBT communities are participating in the social dialogue and how their voices differ from the general market – as opposed to whether they are even present.

The attendees were heavily engaged, bringing up some complicated questions ranging from how social media can reach low income, urban communities to some of the negative “race” conversations taking place on Twitter. One attendees even asked about how social media could be used to reduce racial tensions and improve multicultural relations. The broad dialogue also included the publisher of a newspaper trying to understand how to attract Latina readers and Gay bloggers concerned about being censored by conservative Christian social bookmarkers.

Probably the biggest takeaway came after our multicultural panel discussion when I actually took a look around and paid attention to the people who were attending BlogWorld. I would say that 30-40% of the attendees were either Hispanic, African-American, or Asian, not to mention people from all over the world. BlogWorld was a sea of multicultural and international bloggers, twitterers, marketers and voices. I wonder if the organizers realize that the blogosphere is already multicultural.

Historically, reaching these diverse audiences has been the sole domain of the traditional media world, particularly Spanish-language TV networks, urban radio, Asian newspapers, and GLBT lifestyle magazines. However, with growth of social media, sparked by the early and sustained growth of blogs and social networks, there has emerged a set of platforms with the potential to drastically change the way these multicultural audiences are reached. Specifically, the opportunity to truly engage multicultural and GLBT audiences in a two-way conversation represents a seismic shift in multicultural marketing and communications.

Looking at the growth of the multicultural and GLBT blogosphere during the last few years provides a unique glimpse into how social media is changing multicultural marketing. In many ways, the growth and establishment of multicultural and GLBT blogospheres represents the emergence of a powerful new group of influencers — individuals going online and sharing their opinions with their friends, family and broader community – that are at their heart of their respective ethnic, lifestyle and immigrant communities.

Sensis agency President and multicultural marketing blogger Jose Villa will be moderating an insightful panel of prominent multicultural and GLBT bloggers at the Blog World Expo tomorrow (Saturday, 10/17 at 3pm) to discuss this powerful marketing medium and how to use it to engage the Hispanic, African American, Asian American and GLBT communities. Panelists include:
• Matt Skallerud of Pink Banana Media, a prominent GLBT blogger and social media expert
• Ana Roca-Castro of Premier Social Media and LATISM, a top Hispanic blogger and social media marketer
• Wayne Sutton, an prominent African American blogger and entrepreneur
• Sumaya Kazi, Executive Director of The CulturalConnect andSenior Social Media Manager at Sun Microsystems, who will be speaking on the Asian blogosphere

The panel will involve a lively discussion of issues such as:
• Are multicultural and GLBT bloggers just a part of the broader fabric of a diverse blogosphere or do they represent unique voices that represent their respective communities?
• What makes multicultural and GLBT bloggers different?

Session attendees will walk away knowing:
• Statistics and trends of the growing multicultural blogosphere.
• Key / influential blogs in these communities.
• How to effectively use social media to influence this population and gain brand ambassadors for your organization.
• The importance of authenticity when interacting with these users via social networking.

Click here for more information on the panel discussion and BlogWorld..

With 40+ pages of data, the Hispanic Fact Pack serves as a great bell weather for the overall Hispanic ad industry.

So I found myself wondering – where is the African American Fact Pack? How about the Asian Fact Pack? I know they are much smaller “industries” within the broader media and advertising markets, but don’t they deserve at least a 10 pager? At last count, there are a couple dozen African American ad agencies and even more Asian ad agencies. I know they don’t have the same number of players on the media side, but there are some significant media companies on the print, radio and even Cable TV fronts serving these markets.

This brings up a broader question – why haven’t these segments been able to create coalitions and aggregate their voices to have the same type of influence enjoyed by Hispanic advertising and media trade groups like AHAA, NAHP, and NAHJ? It can’t just be their market size – as both the African-American and Asian ad industries have seen significant growth buoyed by growing populations. I’d love to hear from African American and Asian advertising and media professionals to get their take.

As a quick update, Project MC has launched a beta network on Ning that you can join at http://projectmc.ning.com/. I joined today, and it appears that the network is still being tested. Other than the Ning beta site, I have not heard or read anything else about Project MC.

Hopefully the group gets off the ground, because I think their mission is relevant considering the state of multicultural advertising. No matter where you come down on the various debates swirling around multicultural advertising, no one can argue that the industry is not rapidly changing. A healthy internal debate and a chorus of voices from the leaders of African-American, Hispanic and Asian agencies are critical at this moment.

In terms of what I can ascertain about Project MC, there are some things I definitely like. Most importantly, I am encouraged to see African-American, Hispanic and Asian shops working together. There is truth in the old saying that there is strength in numbers. Not only do we have a louder voice when we join together, but we can take advantage of the diversity we so often promote – we can learn from our diverse experiences – both successes and failures. Beside the collective power of joining together, I think Muse and his colleagues are going about this project the right way by starting with a social media platform.

However, there are a few issues that I would like to see Project MC address.

First, what is the goal of Project MC? I feel the group needs a clearer, more defined, and ideally quantifiable goal than just “define the importance of [multicultural] agencies.” Do they expect to see ad spend increase by x% by 20xx, etc.?

Also, why aren’t prominent multicultural advertisers more actively involved, particularly on the groundfloor of Project MC? According to the Adweek story the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) is being reached out to, but I would like to see some multicultural leaders within ANA involved in launching the group. It is critically important to make the case for multicultural advertising, particularly with examples of ROI and business success that only advertisers can make.

Finally, Project MC needs a broader, more deliberate social media strategy. They are on the right path with the Ning social network, but they can’t expect the entire initiative to live on Ning. How do they plan on leveraging popular social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and social bookmarking sites that are already part of digital lives of the folks they’re trying to reach?

Project MC holds a lot of promise. I sincerely hope they get traction. There are some importance challenges ahead, not the least of which is addresses their biggest concern – turning dialogue into action!

Some of Matthew’s key insights include:
- Teens don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers
- Almost all teenagers have access to the Internet, where they are heavy Facebook users and searchers (and they hate display ads)
- Music is a key part of their lives – they are always listening to it, but don’t like paying for it.
- All teens have mobile phones – which function more like a stereo and text-message machine to them

Shortly before hearing about Matthew’s manifesto, I had recently read an article on how to reach multicultural youth by Tru Pettigrew on Fast Company. According to Pettigrew, multicultural youth “online and mobile consumption and spending habits are outdistancing the general market … almost 2-to-1.”

I found an interesting intersection between Pettigrew’s comments and Matthew Robson’s report on the issue of “access and benefits.” According to Pettigrew access and benefits are the most important drivers of success in marketing to and driving brand engagement among multicultural youth. According to Robson, the key driver to teenage behavior is their lack of money. They want access to movies and music, but will go out of their way to find it cheap or for free. Any brand that is able to give them access to the content they demand cost-effectively, or free, will win their hearts.

One thing is for sure – digital technology is the great equalizer. It gives teens access to the content and information they desire on their terms, whether they are multicultural or not.

While this isn’t a new trend, it was, for the most part, a trend that did not seep over into the multicultural marketing industry.

However, that is starting to change. I feel like every conference or event I go to these days is filled with 20-50 [fill-in the market here] social media experts.

So how do separate the wannabes from the real experts?

A couple of questions to ask and look out for in evaluating so called “Social Media Experts:”

1. Do they have actual CLIENT social media program experience vs. simply PERSONAL experience derived from their own Twittering, Facebook wall posts and blog posts?

2. Are they selling social media programs as finite campaigns (e.g. a Facebook fan page to go with a 4 month paid media campaign?). If yes, this is a red flag.

3. Do they have experience in launching social media campaigns for clients that involve more than a Twitter feed, Facebook Group/Fan page, YouTube channel, and/or Ning social network?

4. How well versed are they in implementing tracking, dashboards and analytics tying social media efforts back to concrete business goal, results and providing clear ROI?

5. Do they have experience running social media programs in complicated client environments with significant exposure to liability (e.g. Fortune 1000 companies, CPGs, regulated industries, government agencies, etc.)?

Start with question #1, and if they pass the mustard on all five questions, you know you’re talking to someone with valuable experience and insights

In terms of multicultural social media experts, use the same criteria listed above but in the context of real-life client experience with social media programs targeted to specific multicultural audiences. Multicultural social media programs are a recent phenomena, so be suspicious of anyone who claims 4 years of experience reach Hispanics or African Americans with social media!

Under the veil of “All marketing essentially is multicultural” this article lays out a vision for integrated multicultural marketing – i.e. the general market agency will be driving the programs, which will be part of / fully integrated into overall media plans, etc.

Am I over-reacting here?

However, what I found was interesting was the huge amount by which Asian-Americans over-index in online shopping and buying. Seventy percent of Asian-Americans say they shop online, as compared to fifty-six percent of all Americans.

Looking at these numbers, I am surprised that more money isn’t focused on that market.