An encouraging sign that could indicate the economy is on the mend is increased interest from diverse organizations (Fortune 1000, government, non-profit, etc.) in recruitment advertising and outreach.

One area of significant interest is diversity recruitment. More and more organizations in a variety of sectors are beginning to examine ways their staff can represent the changing face of America. Looking at diversity recruitment, heavy emphasis is being placed on reaching qualified Hispanic talent. A number of organizations have mentioned to me Hispanic recruitment is a strategic priority for the next one to five years – particularly companies seeking specialized talent and skill sets, such as recruiting Hispanic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) professionals.

I don’t think I will offend anyone by stating Hispanic recruitment has been a fairly formulaic business for decades. In most cases, organizations have managed Hispanic recruiting with three tactics:

1. Attendance at Hispanic career fairs / conferences, such as the National Society of Hispanic MBAs (NSHMBA) Annual Conference, National Council of La Raza (NCLR) Conference, etc.

2. Participation and sponsorship of Hispanic professional and trade organizations, such as the Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting (ALPFA), Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), etc.

3. Placing job postings on Hispanic-focused job boards such as LatPro.com or iHispano.com.

In many cases, these tactics are bundled by one organization – for example, companies recruiting Hispanic MBAs often turn to NSHBMA for sponsorship packages which include a booth at their annual conference job fair and the ability post positions on the NSHMBA job boards.

While the aforementioned tactics remain valid ways to recruit Hispanics, the rapid adoption of digital media – particularly heavy Hispanic social media usage – represents a seismic shift in how companies (and many of the organizations listed above) should approach Hispanic recruitment.

A review of two of the largest social networks in the U.S. – Facebook and LinkedIn – should provide a sense of how social media is changing Hispanic recruitment. Starting with Facebook:

• As of June 2010, Facebook reports they reach 1.4 million Spanish-speaking U.S. Hispanics.

• A quick search of Facebook pages shows there are:
o More than 1,000 “pages” with the word “Hispanic” or “Latino” in their name.
o More than 1,000 “groups” with the word “Hispanic” or “Latino” in their name.
• Facebook ads provide organizations the ability to launch cost-per-click ad campaigns micro-targeted to users based on such metrics as languages spoken, age, likes and interests (e.g. you can reach 60K people ages 30-64, who speak Spanish and have a college degree).

Jumping over to the professional social network LinkedIn reveals equally compelling opportunities:

• Searching “people” with the word “Hispanic” (in their profiles) returns 46,000+ professionals who can be filtered by location, industry, groups, company, seniority level, function and company size.

• There are currently 507 “groups” on LinkedIn with the word “Hispanic” in their name (the largest has 3,602 members).

• There are currently 417 “groups” on LinkedIn with the word “Latino” in their name (the largest has 2,191 members).

• Looing at nationality specific groups, there are as many as 150 Mexican groups, down to two groups for Costa Ricans.

• Linkedin’s Direct Ads platform allows advertisers to target users based on criteria such as age, gender, geography (e.g. a company can easily create ads targeting experienced hi-tech professionals ages 35+ in hi-density Hispanic markets)

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter, custom social networks (on Ning, etc.), and a variety of other social media platforms present equally compelling opportunities to reach even the most targeted Hispanic groups.

There is obviously more to effective Hispanic recruitment than hyper-targeted media channels or leveraging existing online communities. As with any type of advertising program, research is necessary to identify key insights from which to build Hispanic recruitment messaging and creative. In addition, most organizations already have access to the most important asset in developing effective Hispanic recruitment advertising – Hispanic employees. These assets, as well as leveraging key Hispanic insights, should drive the creation of content and creative that will drive awareness.

However social platforms like the ones previously identified, represent an opportunity to drive engagement through paid and earned media activity. This is critical to effectively activating Hispanic talent and getting the most out of the offline partnerships with organizations and event activations that drive highly successful Hispanic recruitment programs.

Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the Forrester Marketing Forum. There was one particular discussion, run by Forrester Analyst Sean Corcoran, that got me thinking a lot about the future of Hispanic marketing.

Corcoran’s session, entitled “The Role of Agencies in the Adaptive Era” revolved around the future of agency relationships, particularly digital agencies, in a world where people consume multiple media, trust one another more than they do marketers, social media helps them connect, and consumer determine what is relevant. The session, which referred to Forrester’s March 2010 “The Future of Agency Relationship,” actually went further into an evaluation of the relevancy of today’s “Big 5” agency model of traditional advertising agencies, direct marketing agencies, media planning agencies, interactive agencies and communications/PR agencies. The takeaway: none of these 5 dominant agency types are appropriate for this new era that requires agencies to artfully combine branding, communications, channel planning & execution, creative, technology and analytics. Instead, a new holistic agency model, based on holistic 360 consumer strategies, instead of the old “push” strategies of the 20th century must ensue.

Looking at this situation and based on Forrester’s insights I infer that two trends will ensue. With so many choices (as agencies continue to compete with each other), larger marketers will move away from traditional “Agency of Record” relationships to working with multiple agencies, many of whom will have stand-out capabilities either in branding, communications, channel planning, creative, technology or analytics. These agencies will be given opportunities to work across disciplines, and bring fresh thinking to the old big 5 mindsets. Mid-to-smaller sized marketers will continue to consolidate their work with new “agencies of record” that will “re-bundle” media, branding, creative, technology, analytics and PR to be relevant in this adapative era. New specialties will be organized around industry and vertical expertise, as opposed to capabilities. The big question for big 5 agencies types will be whether to “double-down” and focus on a specialist role or re-bundle to pursue lead agency roles?

What does all this mean for Hispanic marketing agencies, who are also organized around the same big 5 model? Are there other dynamics at work, particularly vis-à-vis the relationship between traditional agencies and Hispanic agencies?

Needless to say, Hispanic agencies will not be immune from the effects of this dramatic realignment of the agency model and industry. However, I feel the end results and decisions facing Hispanic shops will be different. At the top the marketer food chain, larger marketers will continue the recent trend we saw with Home Depot’s recent decision to move their Hispanic duties from a specialist to their general market agency. These large marketers, as they move away from AOR commitments in the general market, will likely give non-Hispanic agencies opportunities to develop Hispanic programs, across all of the 5 disciplines. It won’t be strange to see general market interactive agencies executing Hispanic programs!

Looking at mid-to-smaller marketers, the demand for “re-bundling” will also likely include multicultural market capabilities. In a world where marketing is more pull oriented, it’s difficult to imagine marketers separating multicultural and general market programs.

The common thread in both of these segments of the market will be that Hispanic agencies will need to expand beyond Hispanic capabilities to include other audiences, including the general market, to be relevant. While that decision won’t be optional, they will also have to decide whether they going to be specialists or lead agencies, in a new “rebundled” multicultural agency world.

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..

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!

It’s already stirred a lively discussion in our agency – would love to hear your thoughts and comments.

First off, I’m glad that OMMA and MIXX figured out a way to hold their annual New York conferences on different days. MIXX managed to finagle having theirs during the first two days of Advertising Week which was fantastically convenient.

As with last year’s conference, I found the sessions interesting and educational. Two that really stood out were Young-Bean Song from Atlas Institute / Microsoft Advertising who spoke about moving to “engagement mapping” as a superior approach over click-tracking for online media optimization and Geoff Ramsey from eMarketer and Jeffrey Cole from USC’s Annenberg Center for the Digital Future who gave some pretty bold predictions about Facebook’s inevitable fall and the coming age of mobile.

As someone who has been in the agency side of online media and marketing for 6 years, I continue to find conferences like MIXX useful to keep up with best practices and encourage us as marketers to continue to push the envelope.

The MIXX conference ended with the MIXX Awards, which were fantastic. If you haven’t seen the winners, you should. You can check out the award winners’ gallery here. The MIXX awards personified a concept I have been talking about a lot during the last few years – that digital advertising is a deep discipline. In fact, to prove this point, the MIXX awards showcased 4 finalist campaigns in 18 different digital advertising categories, from branding Web sites to super rich media to in-game advertising. I have to believe that online media and marketing will only continue to expand… and the MIXX awards might need to add another hour to their program in the coming years!

Overall, the conference was well attended with very good break-out panels. I thought it was particularly notable that more than 25% of the sessions focused on digital marketing. In fact, there were very interesting sessions on mobile marketing, Web analytics, and social media (yes, social media was a central theme of 8 sessions at a direct marketing event!).

The Directo Day Hispanic day at DM Days was not quite as in-depth as I had hoped. Hopefully next year Directo Day will expand and deepen.

I am definitely looking forward to their DMA08 Conference in Las Vegas in October.

My 8 Universal Truths of Email Marketing are:
1. Email Marketing is about creating a clear value exchange with recipients
2. Email is an integral part of people’s lives
3. Email is a proven marketing vehicle
4. Email programs need to be measured
5. Content is king!
6. Take care of your email list
7. Partners are critical to success
8. Email integrates well with other channels

So how do these Universal Truths apply to Hispanic email marketing? And are any other best practices that are unique to the Hispanic email marketing world?

As to how these truths apply to the Hispanic market, while they are all relevant, four (4) stand out as being particularly important when marketing to Hispanics.

Email is an integral part of people’s lives – eMarketer data shows that of the 20.2 million Hispanic Internet users, 79% use email.

Email is a proven marketing vehicle – Recent Mintel Comperemedia data shows that Hispanics are more likely to open an e-mail marketing message than other consumers.

Content is king! - A recent report from JupiterResearch posits that the right personalization and segmentation will aid e-mail marketers looking to reach Hispanics.

Email integrates well with other channels - that same JupiterResearch report states that Hispanic e-mail users are more likely to make an offline or in-store purchase influenced by e-mail.

Lastly, there is one best practice that is unique to Hispanic email marketing – what I am calling the “9th Hispanic Email Marketing Universal Truth.” This truth is that fulfillment needs to be consistent. What this means is that often, Hispanic email programs are developed that are not consistent with the entire user experience online. For example, a CPM email drop with unique Hispanic creative, when clicked on, may take a user to an inconsistent landing page or Web site (which were not optimized for the Hispanic market). Often times there are language disconnects – the email creative is in Spanish, and the landing page is in English, etc.

More to come on this topic after my presentation.

There was one topic that was discussed in a few panels and kept coming up in my conversations at the various networking breaks and parties – what will the ad agency of the future look like?

This is a question that I think about all the time – I guess you could call it the “thing that keeps me up at night” (although my 16 month old daughter Maya holds that title most nights). I run a multicultural interactive agency – a niche within a niche. There were panelists at ad:tech from a handful of Hispanic-focused interactive agencies… another niche within a niche. One of the principals at one of these Hispanic interactive agencies made the case that interactive will be integrated within traditional ad agency capabilities in the future.

I had a similar conversation with the CEO of a large general market interactive agency who asked me “do we have to expand into traditional in the future?”

Someone even brought up the question of whether multicultural advertising will inevitably have to be integrated into general advertising as the U.S. population becomes more and more diverse (we already see this happening in places like Los Angeles where “minority majorities” are causing clients to hire multicultural ad agencies as their lead agencies).

This is a big question that I making some bets on. I am very curious what some of you out there think? Here are some interesting thought starters?

1. Will there room for specialists interactive agencies like Hispanic interactive agencies?
2. Will traditional agencies need to have specialty digital capabilties like SEO and mobile?
3. Will traditional agencies continue buying interactive shops or will the opposite start to happen?