Think Multicultural

I just wrote an article for MobileMarketer providing some tactical recommendations on how to start incorporate mobile marketing into your marketing mix.

“When getting into the mobile marketing realm, start small – well, short.

A short message service (SMS) campaign is a great way to dabble in mobile marketing without taking a huge leap.

Text messaging remains a “must-have” feature for mobile phones, according to a study by Amplitude Research. It is widely used as one of people’s prime communication methods. ”

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.

As a member of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, I have been tracking the controversy regarding Arbitron’s new Portable People Meter (PPM) tracking service for radio for the last few months. This whole PPM thing appears to be a real threat to Hispanic advertising.

While I have only casually been following the controversy, and arguably less affected by it’s ramifications (most of our media and creative work is digitally-focused), today’s decision by Arbitron to roll-out PPM early caught my attention.

Why? Well, in reading one of the articles on Arbitron’s point-of-view I noticed that Arbitron is claiming that the new PPM measurement system will show across-the-board reductions in radio listenership numbers (including mainstream, Urban, and Spanish-language stations). While I understand that the big issue is how much more PPM will affect Urban and Spanish-language stations and their ratings vs. their general market counterparts (and I have no clue what the answer to that question is), an ancillary result of this new system might be a boost to online advertising.

What with radio rating numbers going down across the board, and now a new system sharpening that decline, added to increasing Internet penetration and time spent figures, you would think that PPM’s rollout would accelerate ad budgets shifting to online (from radio in this case). We’ll see what happens.

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.