Think Multicultural

Those of you who follow the Hispanic advertising trades have probably already read about Zubi Advertising’s $80 million multi-platform, multi-client media buy on Univision.com.

I think this is a fantastic example of what a lot of forward-thinking professionals in Hispanic advertising have been pushing for many years - truly integrated marketing programs to reach the Hispanic consumer. For too many years, and at too many agencies, Hispanic media strategies have been staid and flat - 360 advertising all too often has meant doing a TV buy coupled with radio and maybe some out-of-home.

Kudos to Zubi and their media team for developing an integrated media buy (albeit only one network/publisher) that includes both traditional (TV, radio) and new media such as online and mobile. I imagine the cost savings they are generating for their clients (such as Ford and American Airlines) will be significant. Hopefully they will continue to pursue additional integrated buys across other media properties.

These types of deals show that the future of Hispanic advertising is bright for agencies and clients willing to push the envelope and the accepted best practices. I hope everyone is taking notes.

For those of you that do a lot of online advertising, you know how effective A-B testing can be.

Online Creative A/B testing is based on the classic model of testing against a control. For example, one basic element in a banner ad creative is changed to enable an apples-to-apples test. Alternate versions of the same creative with that one element changed are produced and tested to determine which performs best under normal circumstances. The most effective creative then becomes the control to insert back into the cycle.

While it is common to do A/B testing for refining online creative, I don’t think a lot of agencies or advertisers are using this methodology for testing overall campaign creative before going offline into more expensive media.

Online media, particularly SEM (Paid Search) and CPM display advertising, is very inexpensive. What better way to test creative before going out to more expensive traditional media such as TV, radio or OOH? You can test copy, art/visuals, and overall concepts without burning through a lot of media budget.

I just finshed reading Hispanic Market Weekly’s lead story on Internet marketing in the U.S. Hispanic market titled “An Online Connection.”

While I am thrilled that leading industry publications like HMW are writing more and more about the Internet and digital advertising to the U.S. Hispanic market, I was more than a little disappointed with the report.

The entire article focused on how many large brands are embracing building Hispanic-focused branded Web sites. This is great… but my goodness, is building a branded Web site considered news in 2008? As a person who works primarily in digital advertising, I find such vanilla pieces a disservice to our broad and deep industry. With the breadth of disciplines and vehicles - such as social media, email marketing, search engine marketing, and mobile to name a few - currently being utilized by brands in both the general and Hispanic markets, why are we still talking about microsites?

Come on - let’s elevate the conversation. Let’s find some brands and agencies that are pushing the new media envelope. They are out there.

Once we do that, we’ll help move our industry forward, as opposed to holding it back with circa-2000 discussions of inane online tactics.