• Hispanics are early adopters of new technology, especially within the social media realm (we’re basically dealing with an “early adopter” consumer segment)
• Traditional Hispanic marketing is fairly predictable with clear steps to execution and predictable outcomes (you create a print ad and if you get it into the publisher before a certain date it will run it in a magazine with a certain circulation and will be viewed by x number of consumers)

So essentially, Hispanic social media marketing, even more than traditional social media marketing, is highly unpredictable. It is realm chock full of unknowns. An experienced social media marketer will tell you that they never know what will work before they’re actually in market, so it’s a game of trial and error. You have to be willing to fail before you succeed.

Unfortunately, the way most marketing programs (including social media programs) are planned, developed, launched, measured and optimized is based on a linear model that depends on the accuracy of numerous assumptions and emphasizes the planning artifacts (usually in the form of documents like “strategic plans”, creative briefs, and media plans). It is “waterfall” sequential process (as its described in the software development world):

By contrast, over the last few years, a new, more flexible approach to marketing, based on the tenets of Agile methodology (again, an approach pioneered in software development), has been evangelized by many organizations that stresses speed to market, rapid iteration, and embraces the notion that marketers don’t know what works before they’re actually in market. Because of the unpredictable nature of the Hispanic consumer and their use of digital media, and the “wild west” nature of social media marketing, an agile approach is critical to success.

So what does this approach look like? It helps to contrast it to the way most of us have gone about developing marketing programs (and ironically, the waterfall method I proposed in last year’s Hispanic Social Media Guide)

So how do you get started with this new agile approach to Hispanic social media? Follow these simple steps:

#1 Assemble a small team and assign roles – Focus on “doers.” If you planning on producing a lot of Spanish content, get a Spanish copywriter on board. If you will be building an app, get a developer on the team. Give everyone clear roles and make sure you have all the resources to execute on your program.

#2 Decide on the duration of the first project (or “sprint”) – Emphasize short cycles, ideally 2-4 weeks. Anything longer than that means you’re overplanning or don’t have the resources you need to build what you want.

#3 Set goals for the first project / sprint – Flesh out your goals from a user perspective in the form of “stories.” E.g. “I want Hispanic moms to visit the Facebook page, ‘fan’ us, and download a printable recipe.”

#4 Set regular project/sprint meetings – Set short (10-30 min) meeting daily or a couple times a week to discuss the stories, review tasks and estimate time requirements.

#5 Project / sprint retrospective – After you’re in market, evaluate and discuss with the team what went well and what went didn’t.

#6 Start project/sprint planning again (for the next project/sprint) – Go back to step #3 and start again.

This approach to Hispanic social media isn’t about discarding all planning, but instead about condensing into short cycles, where documentation and assumptions are replaced with living programs and actual results (and data).

While I wouldn’t suggest this agile approach for all Hispanic marketing programs, particularly those with hard deadlines and highly defined deliverables (like event marketing, direct mail, or print/OOH advertising), it’s perfectly suited to social media marketing. Social media provides near instant feedback – you’ll know within a few days or weeks whether a program is working. Social media is also relatively inexpensive (particularly of the hard costs of media necessary with most traditional advertising), allowing for easy testing and learning.

One final note: agile Hispanic social media marketing is perfect for companies that are just getting started in the Hispanic market. Success in the U.S. Hispanic mark often requires investments and changes in other aspects of a company’s operation – such as customer service, human resources, and product / service development. Trying to predict them all upfront would be difficult if not impossible

Remember Generación ñ?

It seems like every year a new term hits the industry to describe U.S.-born, acculturated Hispanic youth. While I don’t have a personal preference, I think all these terms are starting to get confusing, especially to marketing executives that are the ultimate audience for such terminology. We need, as an industry, to get marketers to start thinking differently about the Hispanic market precisely because the change that these younger, 2nd and 3rd generation Latinos represent.

Unfortunately, the message gets lost if we’re all talking in a different language. Not the mention the irony that most of us are in the brand building business – and we’re breaking one of our cardinal rules.

Maybe someone can launch a massive online poll and we can all agree.

What do you think?

Moreover, my colleagues and I at Sensis have published a primary research effort we’re calling the “Hispanic Persona Project” – aimed at creating personas representing the entire U.S. Hispanic Internet population. I encourage you to download the free report at www.HispanicPersonaProject.com.

However, in this last installment of a 3-part discussion on Hispanics, social media and personas, I want to take the final results of the Hispanic Persona Project and apply them in the real world of online Hispanics. A “how-to” guide to using Hispanic personas specifically and personas more generally.

Establishing a Primary Persona

The first step in using personas is to identify your primary persona. We developed 4 personas as part of Hispanic Persona Project, and generally speaking, organizations create 2-4 personas. But personas are not meant to be weighted equally – they are most effective when a primary persona is identified that will take preference and priority over the others. There are different ways to identify a primary persona, but a good rule of thumb is to select the persona whose needs most overlap with the other personas.

Now the fun part –using personas to plan marketing programs. Let’s apply Hispanic Personas across three dimensions: 1) Paid Media, 2) Planning interaction and 3) Planning experiences.

Planning Paid Media

Paid media planning is a good place to start using personas. Starting with targeting, we can utilize context. For an example, let’s look at the Carlos, the “Nostalgic Newbie.” We know from his persona that connecting with his home country is a key element of his behavior. U.S. geo-targeted digital media buys on Latin American Websites and ad networks will be highly effective. However digital media offers even more advanced targeting capabilities, such as behavioral targeting, that can help us plan paid media programs. Using Ivan, the “Tech-fluential” as an example, it would be very difficult to “target” him based on his media consumption in a scalable way simply by buying the handful of Websites he visits that are different from his general market counterparts. However, behavioral-based media buys, where you target him on mainstream sites based on his “long-tail” behavior visiting smaller Hispanic sites and blogs can be powerful. Finally, recent research from Yahoo! shows that factoring in mindsets can have a big impact on the effectiveness of paid advertising – advertising has to be contextually relevant when people are engaging in online passions, while users connecting with friends or consuming entertainment will be much more amenable to “unexpected” offers and ads.

Planning Experiences (Owned Media)

Personas also provide useful texture to identify and optimize owned digital experiences, such as Websites, mobile pages, and social media platforms (Facebook pages, YouTube channels and Twitter skins, etc.). Looking at Sandra the “Social Techie,” it’s clear that we need to establish consistent, yet customized experiences available across multiple devices – such as browser-based Websites, mobile Websites, and potentially destinations accessible via new devices such as tablets. We can also use personas to prioritize features and functionality. Whereas an electronics company might provide Ivan the “Tech-fluential” with links to online retailers where he can buy their product, they would emphasize price comparison information and product specifications with Armando the “Utilitarian Explorer.”

Planning Interaction (Earned Media)

Personas arguably provide the most value (vis-à-vis other planning tools) when we begin to plan digital interaction that generates the type of earned media that is the holy grail of social media marketing programs. How do we get someone to “like” a brand page on Facebook? How do we motivate a small percentage of Hispanics to share content with their online network? What motivates someone to create content that is favorable to your product or service? Looking at the 4 Hispanic personas we created, it’s clear that two of the personas represent the majority of the opportunity – the “Tech-fluential” and the “Social Techie.” In this sense, if your campaign is emphasizing social interaction, you will probably want to prioritize and focus on one of these personas. Digging deeper, you can establish your social media campaign objectives based on their behavioral profiles. If your target is Sandra the “Social Technie”, then you can realistically expect sharing of content and establish KPIs around that kind of interaction. However, if Armando is your target, you should manage expectations to focus on impressions and “time spent” metrics.

Where the rubber really meets the road with personas is in their ability to help organization understand what motivates users. In social media this is critical, as motivation will drive online behavior and interaction. With Ivan, the “Tech-influential,” that motivation is influence – this persona places a high value on being “in the know,” so offering him social functionality, like the ability to retweet content or influencing the opinion of a prominent blogger he follows will be highly valuable. With Sandra, the Social Techie, the motivation is popularity, staying in touch, and being heard. She will be highly influenced by the behavior of her peers and giving her the ability to easily share portable content will pay big dividends.

Takeaways

While this article was a hypothetical application of broad personas, the value they provide only amplifies when you create your own personas (Hispanic or not) and focus your application on a specific industry, product category or segment. Moreover, personas are dynamic planning tools that are meant to be “enhanced’ with additional data points. After going to market, you should regularly optimize your personas with Web analytics data, digital media tracking results, and social media monitoring outputs from past campaigns.

(an edited version of this article originally ran on MediaPost’s Engage Hispanic blog on 5/5/2011)

I know everybody and their mother is putting out their analysis of the U.S. Census figures these days, particularly as they relate to the Hispanic population. However this article is definitely worth your time, as it tackles some pretty big issues and implications, both in the near-term and in the future (a few generations out).

In full disclosure, I was interviewed for the article (my take on the implications for business and marketing is included) and Wharton is my alma mater.

The reason I think the shortlist decision is important is that it indicates clients are unwilling to trust Hispanic ad agencies with their general market business, while obviously being willing to trust general market shops with Hispanic duties (one exception: McCann-Erickson is pitching with their sister Hispanic agency Casanova Pendrill). Last I checked, RPA and Goodness Mfg do not do Hispanic work – but El Pollo Loco doesn’t seem to mind.

This is particularly unnerving when you look more closely at El Pollo Loco’s history – the quintessential Hispanic brand that “crossed-over” to the general market. If there was ever an account where a Hispanic agency would, and should, take the lead, it would be a brand like El Pollo Loco. They started in Mexico, became popular with U.S. Hispanics in L.A., and have a huge Hispanic following. El Pollo Loco successfully expanded outside of it’s core Hispanic audience by offering a healthy authentic Mexican fast food experience, and many would argue, lost it’s way in recent years because it lost some of that “authenticity.”

As Adweek noted, this account is very much a turn-around job. Yet company brass feel a general market shop can turn-around this Hispanic brand more effectively than any of the number of Hispanic ad agencies that pitched the business (I know of at least a few solid Hispanic shops that pitched the business and had the chops to handle the general market elements of the account).

I don’t like being the industry doomsday prophet, but this one really hurts…

Last week, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) held its annual Multicultural Marketing Conference, and despite a heavy-hitting agenda focused on the importance of targeted and relevant communication to drive growth in the multicultural segment, many attendees and reporters walked away with the misperception that a singular insight focused on cultural commonalities should guide marketing strategy. That one-size-fits-all marketing approach doesn’t deliver multicultural consumers. In fact, some of the country’s top marketing thought leaders at the conference cited case studies in which specific multicultural insights, which reporters erroneously called narrowcasting, indeed were the cornerstone of their profit-building campaigns.

Perhaps the confusion was driven by Ogilvy’s sponsorship of the conference and the launch of their new cross-cultural practice. The unilateral marketing approach may sound appealing to save costs, but mass marketing will wipe out brands…and that wasn’t the message multicultural marketers were delivering.

The conference theme – Multicultural is the New Mainstream – and opening remarks from Gilbert Dávila, chair of the ANA’s multicultural marketing and diversity committee, reiterated the importance of targeted marketing to achieve full business potential. “You can’t target these markets the same way you’ve targeted the general market to date,” Dávila said. “We’ve got to devise creative ways to reach these groups – either in English or in their own native or cultural languages- so that our messages make them feel we are talking to THEM. To not address multicultural groups in culturally relevant ways is a huge mistake too many make.

“In the Hispanic market, we recognize that Spanish language remains the language of the heart and of preference, and is critically important to an effective communications platform. If you take nothing else from this conference, please remember that just because you can speak English to a multicultural audience, doesn’t mean that you can include them in your marketing efforts without taking their language, preferences and cultural cues into consideration. Multicultural groups don’t ask to be included; they expect to be represented.”

Savvy marketers like Betsy Frank, chief research and insights officer at Time Inc., understand that as well. “Because powerful storytelling is at the center of everything we do, our brands need to incorporate the perspective and needs of the multicultural audience into the stories we tell,” Frank says. “We need to tailor marketing and business strategies accordingly.”

That’s the value that a specialized Hispanic agency brings.

Let’s dispel the belief that Hispanic agencies fear general market agencies because GM agencies can do it better than Hispanic-specialized shops. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. Our objection is that their approach — a cross-cultural strategy — is one that waters down communication in order to be everything to everybody and waters down the results.

Here’s an example. The journey of our Latina Millennial mom is very different than other cultures. Rather than being the child who was given a trophy for every activity, which would lead her to become more ‘me’ focused; it was the hard work of her parents and the respect that she has for them that has driven her to succeed.

The general market would say, “Ah! Millennials are more ‘ME’ focused and that’s our point of convergence for all moms so therefore we can execute one communication strategy.” However; that approach lacks sensitivity to why the Latina mom is the way she is. Guess what? The more inspirational way of talking to Millennials just may be through the Latina insight.

Clients are demanding a holistic approach to marketing with a single brand voice, but that doesn’t mean sacrificing targeted communication. The goal should be to bring the insight to the strategy, and if the granularity demands a separate communication, so be it. If not, fine; but do the homework! Let the cultural experts help guide the development of the communication.

1. First, why is the launch of an agency Web site worthy of an email blast from HispanicAd.com? Was it the fact that it was created internally at the agency? Maybe the music (see #3 below).

2. All Flash. Not to pick on Lopez Negrete, but I thought agencies finally got over their fascination with creating all Flash animated Web sites (in 2002). I mean, I get the benefits, but I still feel the drawbacks outweigh them (inferior user experience, clunky navigation), assuming the Flash was optimized for SEO (search engine spiders) and made web analytics friendly (which I doubt)

3. Music. Really? I know CMO’s, the press, and potential employees love music like the rest of us, but is that what they’re really hoping to find when the site loads up (I’m glad the status bar continues to live on!)

4. Navigation. Rule one of usability – make sure a Web site’s navigational elements are immediately intuitive and straightforward to users. I get the Loteria/Village theme, but will a user really know that the “Post Office” is the Contact Us page or the “City Hall” tab is really About us?

5. The splash page! I know most sites lose 50-80% of their visitors off the home page, but doggonit, it’s worth it if there’s an animated carousel involved.

I know, I probably sound really negative and snarky with this post. Again, don’t mean to pick on the really smart folks over at Lopez Negrete, but I think their new site, launched in November 2009 is indicative of the predicament facing most traditional agencies. They still don’t get the intricacies of digital communications. In this case, creating an immersive, usable, and engaging user experience that matches up with their key users’ (Web personas) needs…

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

It is all over the news that there was a shooting incident today at Ft. Hood outside of Killeen, TX.

The interesting social media story is that within hours, if not minutes, of the shootings the Austin American-Statesman set up a Twitter account called @FtHoodShootings to cover the news of the event.

In less than two hours they have almost 2000 followers.

Much like URLs, the Twitter land grab has started and will only accelerate. As events happen or stars become famous, people will move quickly to snatch up Twitter accounts with relevant names. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I think the trend Forrester notes is undeniable.

One interesting thought exercise would be to consider what this shift in the agency food chain, if fully realized, would mean for Hispanic agencies. Considering that few Hispanic shops have robust digital capabilities, coupled with the increasing pace of technology-driven media changes – might this trend further their marginalization?

What do you think?

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.