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.

If you’re looking for a nice overview and intro to the LGBT market, please check out their “Pink is the New Green” post.

As advertising continues to shift away from mass marketing focused on reach and frequency on broad reach platforms like TV that no longer reach everyone, to targeted, niche-driven marketing focused on engagement, it stands to reason that appeal of niches like the LGBT market will increase.

The “Pink is the New Green” piece also addresses how LGBT marketing is evolving from the old days of focusing primarily on events and local print to a more integrated approached leveraging increasingly sophisticated media vehicles like digital media.

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..

As I was reading this piece, I was particularly happy to see someone finally address the opportunity / missed opportunity to take on digital by multicultural shops. According to the author “There are battlegrounds where the multicultural shops could be gaining ground – experiential and digital. These fields require a heavy expertise and a “boots on the ground” sort of approach. However, no one seems to making a motion to own these two spaces.”

AMEN!

Let’s start with the advertisers and their brands at the top of the food chain. Here are two resolutions for brand managers, directors of multicultural marketing, and their colleagues that manage the Hispanic marketing efforts of corporate America:

Advertiser Resolution 1 – Re-Invest in Research
In times of great change, it will be critical to re-evaluate some of the key assumptions and insights that have driven your past Hispanic marketing efforts. The most basic questions should be re-evaluated, because you might be surprised at the answer. How large is the Hispanic market for my product or service? What does my target Hispanic consumer look like? Where are the largest concentrations of our target Hispanic consumers? Commission Focus Groups to understand perceptions of your brand and competitors. Work with research partners to answer some of the aforementioned questions. If it has been more than a year since you did significant research on the Hispanic market, you might be surprised at the results.

Advertiser Resolution 2 – Take a Fresh Look at Your Approach to Hispanic Marketing
If you and your agency partners don’t do what the military calls “after action reviews” or “post-mortems” on your past Hispanic marketing effort, resolve to do one for your 2008 efforts. Identify what worked – and what didn’t. Establish best practices. Every marketer typically has a “sweet spot” where they always perform well – be it that annual sponsorship of the Fiesta Broadway or local radio. Most importantly, rethink your media mix. Although the Hispanic media landscape has evolved slower than its general market counterparts, there is no denying that things have changed drastically. Changing demographics in the U.S. Hispanic market have been accompanied by distinct changes in media habits – including the adoption of new media (Internet, mobile, etc.), continued proliferation of cable TV, and a shift to digital platforms (digital TV, digital out-of-home, etc.) to name a few.

Jumping over to the Hispanic agencies that develop and steward many of the Hispanic marketing programs, I would like to suggest 2 resolutions:

Agency Resolution 1 – Find and Focus on Your Core Competency
As we move into the 2009, there is no doubt that Hispanic advertising agencies will be challenged like never before to defend their position vis-à-vis increasing competition from general market ad agencies and make a clear value proposition to clients facing budget constraints. As expert marketers, we all preach to our clients the folly of trying to be everything to everyone. The same applies to Hispanic ad agencies. As so elegantly articulated in Tim Williams’ book “Take a Stand for Your Brand,” Hispanic advertising agencies need to identify their core purpose and value proposition. Whether that is Hispanic youth marketing, or grass-roots marketing, an agency without a differentiated core competency will have a hard time in 2009 and beyond. Conversely, Hispanic ad agencies that commit themselves to core competencies and clear, differentiated purpose will thrive.

Agency Resolution 2 – Think about How Digital Will Change How You Do What You Do
It would be a contradiction of Agency Resolution 1 to recommend that every Hispanic advertising agency embrace digital advertising as a core competency. I’m not suggesting you become a digital agency. However, that does not mean that Hispanic agencies can ignore the deep and systemic effect that digital advertising has had on advertising in general. In the general market, digital advertising has ushered in a new paradigm in accountability and measurement that is affecting all aspects of advertising, from broadcast TV to “below-the-line” tactics such as event marketing. With the aforementioned pressure on advertising budgets, direct response programs will only increase in favor vs. their branding brethren. Most importantly, digital platforms have redefined the media discussion from concepts like reach and frequency to engagement and immersion. Any Hispanic agency that plans on thriving, let alone surviving, needs to rethink and retool their approach to align with this new reality.

Finally, as we look at the Hispanic media industry, I offer one broad resolution:

Media Resolution 1 – Invest in Digital
As I’ve pointed out for brands and agencies, digital is changing the advertising game. If you haven’t put serious resources behind digital platforms, now is “do or die” time. Hispanic media companies, from TV broadcasters, to radio stations, to newspapers, have had the luxury of advance notice and the lessons of their general market counterparts. If you think you can put your head in the sand and ignore broad shifts in consumer media habits towards digital and personalized “on-demand” media platforms like the Internet, TIVOs, and iPods, ask the Tribune Company what will happen. Although the Hispanic consumer market traditional lags behind the general market in technology and new media adoption, this only gives you time.

To borrow a tagline from a very successful marketer in 2008, “change is coming.” For those of us in Hispanic marketing, resolve to embrace that change and thrive!

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.

I just got back from the 12th Annual Hispanic Marketing Midwest Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota… yes, you read that correctly, Minnesota. This is the 12th installment of what I didn’t realize is the one of the largest Hispanic marketing conferences in the Midwest. In fact, I didn’t realize what a growing Hispanic market the Twin Cities is!

Aside from the unique nature of it’s location, the Hispanic Marketing Midwest Conference was solid in both content and attendance. I was invited to speak on Hispanic Search Engine Marketing, and had a chance to enjoy the entire day’s program.

The conference started out with a very interesting overview on the Hispanic market by Sonya Suarez-Hammond from Yankelovich Multicultural. Her presentation was very insightful and provided a nice start to the conference.

This was followed by a very visual presentation by Laritza Lopez of Real Latino Images, a Hispanic stock photography house, discussing the nuances of Hispanic creative messaging and imagery.

Cristina Benitez followed with an interesting look at how Hispanics are changing the mainstream, based on her book Latinization. Ursula Mejía-Melgar completed the morning with a very interested cross-platform case study on General Mill’s “Que Rica Vida” program.

Derene Allen from Santiago Solutions Group followed my Hispanic Search Engine Marketing presentation with a very interesting study on Latina Shopping Habits and a program they helped develop for Johnson & Johnson.

All in all, kudos to Rick Aguilar and his energetic team for putting on a great conference. With the heavy concentration of large corporations based in the Twin Cities, this conference had a strong corporate presence from committed multicultural marketers such as Target, General Mills, and U.S. Bank.