If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen innumerable reports and studies stating that Hispanics are more social.

Most of the data backing up this catchy headline focuses on social media usage. Hispanics are active users of social media platforms, particularly social networks like Facebook, micromedia such as Twitter, and the reading and writing of blogs. Research firms like Forrester have gone further and looked at what type of social media users Hispanics are by understanding where they fit into their well-respected social technographic ladder (“Inactives” vs “Creators”, etc.). Again, the data paints a positive picture that Hispanics over-index the general market in terms of their engagement level. In plain English – there are a lot of Hispanic social media users and they are more active.

All of this quantitative data is sound and the conclusion is pretty straightforward – Hispanics use social media, as much or more than their general market counterparts. That’s great and all, but it doesn’t really help a marketer figure out how to use social media to market to Hispanics.

Why not? Isn’t the data enough to support most brands and companies investing in Hispanic social media?

Unfortunately, the tools aren’t there. Hispanic marketers only have a two-dimensional prism to understand a three-dimensional world. Put another way, all the great data I referenced earlier just confirms that Hispanics are consuming/producing social media, but that isn’t enough information to understand how to engage them in this space Why? Because social media activity cannot be simply filtered as Hispanic unless Hispanics behave differently than non-Hispanics in this environment.

The problem lies in the simple premise at the heart of the multi-billion dollar Hispanic marketing industry – that most Hispanics are culturally and linguistically different from the “general market” and consume different media (i.e. Hispanic media, 90 percent of which is in Spanish). This premise is the reason why two symbiotic sectors exist:
• Hispanic advertising and PR agencies that create culturally and linguistically relevant communications for Hispanic consumers
• Hispanic media that provides Hispanic consumers with linguistically and/or culturally unique content they demand (where Hispanic ad agencies can buy media on and PR firms can “earn” coverage in)

When we talk about reaching Hispanics in social media the aforementioned premise no longer holds true. Specifically, the second part of the premise breaks down – Hispanics are not consuming different media – they are on the same Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other large scale “connected” platforms as everyone else. That is what makes social media so powerful – you can connect 500 million people on the same network, even though they may be in 100 different countries speaking 150 different languages.

The concept of segmenting one ethnic group – either based on language, culture or media consumption – becomes fundamentally more complex when everyone is on the same site, network or platform. You can’t simply cling to differences in the language of media consumption. You can’t look to Facebook “en Español” (ask MySpace how that worked out for them) when the content is no longer asymmetrical – you don’t have a single, centralized content producer (think Univision or SBS) being consumed by large scale masses. The “content-creation-to-content-consumption” continuum is peer-to-peer (with companies/brands mixed in at the same level of peers), so it’s very difficult to depend on only contextual relevance.

What we’re missing is qualitative data about if, and how, Hispanics use social media differently. Do they consume, comment on, or produce social content that is different than the general market?

Language plays a part, but when you are connecting 100s of millions of people on the same platform, there is a lot of cross-language media consumption taking place. More simply, do Hispanics exhibit different behavior on social media? Part of this qualitative question is whether they demand – and therefore consume – different content. But that’s only part of the behavioral equation.

Do they produce different content (e.g. talk about different things)? Do they comment differently (i.e. are they more likely to comment positively than the general market)? Do they exhibit different attitudes towards brands and companies in social media? Do some of the generally excepted models of social media behavior apply “apples-to-apples” to U.S. Hispanic consumers (i.e. does the Hispanic social technographic ladder have different rungs)?

I have anecdotal evidence from client campaigns that they do behave differently, but our industry needs more robust qualitative research and behavioral models to provide the 78 percent of hesitant marketers (according to an Orci report) with the intelligence they need to smartly “go to market” with Hispanics in social media.

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.

Please share your comments on the new look and architecture of the site. There are a few more changes to come, as we continue to grow and evolve ThinkMulticultural.com

Saludos,

Jose Villa

I am extremely proud and excited to announce that our agency ranked No. 2 on Hispanic Business magazine’s list of the fastest growing Hispanic-owned businesses and earned a spot at No. 448 on the HB500, a list of top Hispanic-owned companies in the nation.

While our growth has been fueled by multiple internal and external factors (not the least of which is our amazing team of professionals), I think the trend in multicultural marketing towards digital platforms has helped validate our business model and provide us with some nice tailwinds to help spur our growth.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Last Thursday, Current Network became the first brand to solicit agencies via Twitter to receive RFPs for its account review.

Just another chapter in the burgeoning popularity of Twitter? Or just a side-show stunt for a brand to get some free PR.

While I tend to view this as more the latter, the entire turn of events got me thinking about Hispanic agency reviews. Can you imagine what would happen if Current Network was looking for a Hispanic agency? Probably wouldn’t have been as exciting nor have solicited the hundreds of creative responses that Current received (check out One to One’s video response). I mean, how many leaders at Hispanics agencies even Twitter? My theory is that not a lot. Would love to be proven wrong…

If any of you follow any Hispanic agency leaders via Twitter, please share their Twitter usernames. Mine is www.twitter.com/jrvilla

A professor (Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management) from my alma mater, The Wharton School of Business, claims that paid advertising as we’ve all come to know it and make a living from, will inevitably fail, because:
1. Consumers do not trust advertising
2. Consumers do not want to view advertising
3. Consumers do not need advertising

While 600+ angry responses ensued, one particularly thoughtful debate developed between Professor Clemons and Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand, regarding the future and sustainability of search engine marketing on Google, Yahoo! etc.

I highly encourage that you read Professor Clemons’ original post, and the debate between Professor Clemons and Danny Sullivan.

For one, I think this is a very healthy debate for our industry to be having. It is during recessionary times that everything, including fundamental business models, need to be re-evaluated, optimized and/or abandoned.

However, I was struck by the omission of two key assumptions that most everyone has seemed to miss in this debate – the intelligence and savvy of consumers to:
1. Trust effective, honest and compelling advertising for products or services they are interested in and,
2. View and find value in ads that are relevant to their needs or wants

Professor Clemons doesn’t seem to see that. Those of us in advertising give much more credit to the intelligence of our audiences and the value of the products and services we are selling.

What do you think?

The conundrum Alberto discusses can be more broadly applied to all specialist agencies. At the end of the day, most clients want to directly deal with as few agencies as possible (whether they say so or not). It’s primarily a bandwidth issue. So whether you are a PR firm, an interactive agency, or an event marketing firm, you fight this battle all the time.

This issues seems to fly in the face of the recommendations made by Tim Williams in his agency manifesto “Take a Stand for Your Brand: Building a Great Agency Brand from the Inside Out.” Mr. Williams posits that agencies need to specialize and not be all things to all people – but how does that vision reconcile with the realities of clients wanting fewer agency relationships and going for the “one stop shop” Alberto described in his post.

At our agency, we think about this issue incessantly. It’s interesting because, depending on the client, we are in some instances the lead agency, in others an equal partner with a traditional agency, and many times what I like to call the “sub-partner” (aka the sub-contractor.) Most times, the farther you are away from the client, the more bureaucratic the process, the less fulfilling the work, the less opportunity you have to bring groundbreaking ideas, and the less you are able to impact the client’s business.

The one bright spot I see in all this mess for specialty shops (at least digitally-focused ones) is the emergence and continued evolution of digital. I see more and more clients turning away from their full-service, “we can do everything for you including digital” traditional agencies and looking for the insights and deep discipline knowledge of interactive agencies. Things move too fast with digital, and everyone accepts that, including clients.

Batanga’s release reported a “combined total audience” of 10.8 million. The key takeaway appeared to be Batanga = 10.8 million uniques. However, once you look closer, Batanga really has about 3 million unique visitors. HispanoClick, the Hispanic ad network they acquired a few months ago, accounted for more than 70% of the “combined total audience.” It makes sense for Batanga to report a combined number, as Batanga’s 3 million uniques doesn’t compare well to Univision’s 16.5 million. At that point you’ve got a niche music site vs. a broad-based juggernaut. However, if you throw in HispanoClick’s reach, suddenly you’re looking at more of a fair fight – Batanga’s combined 10.8 million to Univision’s 16.5 million.

I think Batanga’s acquisition of HispanoClick was a good move for several reasons, but I also think that Batanga is a good enough property and a good enough brand that they shouldn’t have to go fudging the numbers in their press releases.

On the other hand, Univision’s release cited a study that found that “Univision.com was the most-visited Spanish-language website in the U.S. among Hispanics who used the Internet at least once in the 30 days prior to taking the survey” and various other claims making Univision sound very impressive. Weird thing was, the data was based on a study by Forrester Research that included “150 non-Hispanics, 402 Hispanics; 269 Spanish-dominant/bilingual Hispanics and 133 English-dominant Hispanics.” 552 people? Really? How much did Univision pay Forrester for the opinions of 552 people? Is that even a statistically significant result? Also, why is the claim qualified by “who used the Internet at least once in the 30 days prior to taking the survey”? Is the result different for all Hispanics across the board? Or for Hispanics who used the Internet at least once a day in the prior month?

Again, Univision is the 800-pound gorilla in the market, do they really need to use shady numbers to prove it?

What’s my point? No point, really, just that you have to love PR people. Amazing.

At ThinkMulticultural, we get outreach from time to time from PR agencies for companies like Wal-Mart and AT&T who want us to feature what great things their clients are doing in multicultural markets. This is done in hopes that something we write about those clients will reflect well upon them. That’s perfectly legitimate. Sometimes it is even interesting and we write about those things.

But there’s a downside to blog-outreach, and that’s the spam comment. Comments appear when someone writes in response to a post and it then appears below the post (see the “Submit Comment” box at the bottom of the page?). In contrast to real comments, spam comments are designed to look like real comments, but really are just links back to some other website, used to drive traffic and increase search rankings on Google.

We got a spam comment last week from a major multicultural media company. We were really surprised, because normally spam comments come from people selling Viagara and fake Rolex watches, not from large, legitimate companies.

We’re not going to name names this time, but you know who you are. And we know who you are. Do us all a favor – use legitimate PR and advertising. If you’re doing something interesting, we’ll write about it. Don’t drag down the conversation with cheap tricks like that.