Posted by Elena del Valle on January 6, 2010
Click on image to enlarge
While broadband internet access from home increased among whites, blacks and Hispanics, Latinos showed the most significant increase in internet use from 2006 to 2008. Although there are fewer Latinos online than whites in 2008, 10 percent more Latinos were online than two years before. Internet use among Latino adults reached 64 percent during that time. That growth outstripped that of whites (4 percent) and black (2 percent) visitors to the internet during the same time period, according to Latinos Online, 2006-2008: Narrowing the Gap, a recent report.
The researchers who authored the report believe the growth was mainly because of an increase in Latinos online who have in the past been absent from the virtual world such as foreign-born Latinos, poorly educated Latinos, and Latinos with an income below $30,000 a year.
They believe that from 2006 to 2008 the increase in the likelihood of having a home connection among internet users was minimal. At the same time, rates of broadband connection increased significantly for Hispanics, whites and blacks. In 2006, 63 percent of Hispanics with home internet access had a broadband connection; in 2008, 76 percent had broadband access. Whites with a broadband connection went from 65 percent to 82 percent, a 17 percentage point increase, and black access to broadband went from 63 percent in 2006 to 78 percent in 2008.
The authors of Latinos Online are Gretchen Livingston, senior researcher, Pew Hispanic Center; Kim Parker, senior researcher, Pew Social and Demographic Trends Project; and Susannah Fox, associate director, Pew Internet and American Life Project.
They derived their findings from a compilation of eight landline telephone surveys conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Internet and American Life Project from February to October 2006, and from August to December 2008. The Pew Hispanic Center surveyed 7,554 adults, and the Pew Internet and American Life Project interviewed 13,687 adults.
Founded in 2001, the Pew Hispanic Center is a nonpartisan research organization that seeks to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos’ growing impact on the nation. The Pew Internet Project conducts original research that explores the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life.
Reach Hispanics online today with
“Marketing to Hispanics Online” audio recording
Identifying and characterizing the booming Hispanic online market
Joel Bary, Alex Carvallo and Matias Perel
Find out about
• The 16 million Latino online users
• Latino online users by gender
• What they do online
• Their language preferences
• How to reach Hispanic urban youth online
• What affects their online behavior
• What influences their purchases
Click here for information about “Marketing to Hispanics Online”
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 28, 2009
Dave Isay, founder and president, StoryCorps
Photos: Griot Initiative
Are you Hispanic and living in a city the United States or Puerto Rico? Are you comfortable with the idea of an audio recording? Is there a past experience you yearn to share with a friend and others you may never meet? If you answered yes to all these questions, you may want to participate in StoryCorps Historias, an ongoing national program for Latinos developed by Dave Isay of StoryCorps and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). The program, launched in New York City September 2009, will be in Miami, Florida January 7-30, 2010.
Part of the program’s outreach is done by partnering with local radio stations, cultural institutions and community-based organizations to collect recordings from 21 locations. In Miami, StoryCorps is partnering with WDNA-FM 88.9 Public Radio, which plans to air some of the local stories. Selected interviews will also air on Latino USA, an English-language news program broadcast in 31 states and NPR’s Morning Edition.
Maggie Pelleyá, general manager of WDNA-FM 88.9 Public Radio
“Miami is the gateway to the Caribbean as well as Central and South America, and everyone has a story of how they arrived here, how they work, how they raise their families, and how they consider Miami their home,” said Maggie Pelleyá, general manager of WDNA-FM 88.9 Public Radio. “WDNA is proud to host this opportunity to share the stories of many who consider Miami as the Magic City.”
According to a StoryCorps representative, participants are free to discuss anything they like, in English or Spanish, such as a favorite memory or important life questions. The StoryCorps Historias website lists some ideas and suggested questions for those seeking inspiration.
“StoryCorps reminds us of our shared humanity; by listening to our stories, we walk in the shoes of others and recognize how much we have in common,” said Isay, founder and president, StoryCorps in a press release about the upcoming Miami program. “We are proud to work with WDNA to help create a growing portrait of our nation’s fastest-growing minority group by preserving the stories of Latinos throughout the country.”
As part of the process, each participant, asked to donate $25, receives a broadcast quality copy of his or her recording. The fee will be waived for those who cannot afford to pay. A facilitator assists participants in the recording session. There are two bilingual facilitators in the program.
At the end the organization plans to select 1,000 recordings to collate together. Those recordings selected for broadcast and archiving in the Library of Congress will be edited and shortened with the participants permission. Also involved in the national initiative are Latino Public Radio Consortium, Latino USA and the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project.
A StoryCorps MobileBooth
Residents of San Francisco, California; Eastern Puerto Rico; Taos, New Mexico; Alamosa, Colorado; Austin and Houston, Texas; and Boston, Massachussets already participated in the program this year. In addition to Miami, the Mobile Booth, where the recordings take place, will visit: Yuma and Phoenix, Arizona January 4, 2010; San Juan, Puerto Rico January 20, 2010; Los Angeles, February 8, 2010, and Fresno, March 22, 2010 in California; as well as Washington, DC April 2010; Albuquerque, New Mexico May 17, 2010; Chicago, Illinois May 17, 2010; Brownsville, May, 2010, and San Antonio, June, 2010, in Texas; San Diego, California July, 2010 and Granger, Washington at a date to be determined.
StoryCorps plans to collect 120 stories in Miami. Its MobileBooth will be parked at the Wolfson Campus of Miami Dade County College for four weeks. Details can be found on the organization’s website, StoryCorps.org.
In addition to Historias, StoryCorps has three other initiatives: Griot, designed to preserve the voices, experiences, and life stories of African Americans; Memory Loss Initiative for people affected by memory loss; and 9/11 Initiative to honor and remember the stories of survivors, rescue workers, and others personally affected by September 11.
StoryCorps is an independent non-profit whose mission is to “honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.” According to promotional materials, StoryCorps has one of the largest archives of American voices ever created. Each week, StoryCorps broadcasts air on NPR’s Morning Edition. Other funders include The Atlantic Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, The Annenberg Foundation, and Joe and Carol Reich.
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 16, 2009
U.S. Hispanic, Non Hispanic Youth – click to enlarge
What’s on Latino youths minds? Why should business people, marketers and mainstream Americans care? According to the Pew Hispanic Center, this is the first time in the history of the United States that a minority ethnic group has represented such a large a share of the youngest Americans. Eighteen percent of people 16 to 25 in America claim Latino ethnicity. These young men and women represent an important part of the future of our country and will continue to do so for years to come since one of every four babies born in the United States today is Hispanic.
A recent Pew survey indicates Latinos 16 to 25 years old believe in the value of education, hard work and a career. These young people have in common a degree of satisfaction with their lives and optimism about their future. At the same time the youths that responded to the survey appear more likely to drop out of school, live in poverty and be teen parents than mainstream youths. The Pew researchers also believe many of these young people are exposed to gangs and live between two cultures. That may not be surprising since the researchers estimate almost one of four (22 percent) Hispanic youths between 16 and 25 are unauthorized immigrants.
The 150-page report, Between Two Worlds: How Latino Youths Come of Age in America, authored by the staff of the center, is based on analysis of government demographic, economic, education and health data sets; a series of focus groups; and a survey conducted between August 2009 and September 2009 among a random national sample of 2,012 Hispanics ages 16 and older, with an oversample of 1,240 Hispanics ages 16 to 25. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish by cellular and land line telephones.
Paul Taylor, director, Pew Hispanic Center wrote the report overview and edited the report. Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research; Mark Hugo Lopez, associate director; Rich Morin, senior editor of the Pew Research Center’s Social and Demographic Trends project; and Richard Fry, senior research associate, also contributed chapter work to the report.
The report offers a generational analysis of the behaviors, values and experiences of Latino youth who are immigrants themselves (about one-third) and those who are the children and grandchildren (or higher) of immigrants and who responded to the survey.
Two-thirds of Hispanics ages 16 to 25 are native-born Americans. This year marks the first time that so many, 37 percent, of Latinos in this age group are the U.S.-born children of immigrants. An additional 29 percent are of third-or-higher generations while only 34 percent are immigrants themselves. Although Latinos only make up 18 percent of all youths 16 to 25 in the country in some states the percentage of Latinos in that age group is significantly higher: 51 percent of all youths in New Mexico, 42 percent in California, 40 percent in Texas, 36 percent in Arizona, 31 percent in Nevada, 24 percent in Florida and in Colorado.
Survey respondents expressed a strong preference to be identified with their family’s country of origin (52 percent) over American (24 percent) or the terms Hispanic or Latino (20 percent). One third of the U.S.-born children of immigrants identifies first as American and half of the third and higher generation identifies as American first.
The Pew Hispanic Center is a project of the nonpartisan, non-advocacy Pew Research Center. The complete report is available on the organization’s website.
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 15, 2009
An article profiling Elena del Valle, principal LNA World Communications and HispanicMPR editor and host, was published in the October 2009 issue of Somos Magazine for Hispanic Heritage Month. The Spanish language article was written by Luisa M. Fournier-Padró and also appears in the online edition of the publication at Somosonline.com.
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 9, 2009
Angel Gurría, secretary-general, OECD
Photo: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
In spite of the recent talk of job related improvements, millions of Americans have suffered the ill effects of unemployment. Teenagers have been hit especially hard. For example, in November 2009, more than 25 percent of 16 to 19 year-old Americans were unemployed compared to ten percent for all workers. This is said to be the highest rate of teenage unemployment in the U.S. since World War II.
According to Jobs for Youth: United States, a 170-page report released this month by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in the year to November 2009, the youth unemployment rate in the United States rose by 8 percentage points to 19 percent representing an additional 1.6 million young people out of work.
“The short-term priority must be to help the young people most at risk to avoid the long-term scarring of a generation of young Americans,” said Angel Gurría, secretary-general, OECD in a news release. “Business must play its part in creating jobs but the government has to act quickly to extend financial support to more young people and increase funding for re-employment programmes. Longer-term, investing more in education to give young people the skills they need to succeed is essential.”
Unemployment in U.S. Youth 2008-2009 – click to enlarge
As recently as 2007, the youth employment rate was 53 percent. While not ideal, especially when compared with 60 percent in 2000; the youth unemployment rate, at 11 percent, was about 1 percentage point higher than its 2000 level. The report summary predicts African-American youth, youth with no qualifications and young women are particularly to face increasing challenges.
Jobs for Youth: United States is the latest in a series of OECD reports on youth employment policies that covers 14 countries. OECD provides a forum for member governments to compare policy experiences, “seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies.”
Target Latinos effectively by understanding how they shop
“Hispanic Holiday Shopping Patterns” audio recording
Manuel Delgado, CEO Agua Marketing, gives a presentation and participates in an extended Q&A discussion about
- Hispanic shopping patterns national survey
- Why Latino consumers may be more desirable than general market shoppers
- Hispanics holiday shopping patterns and behaviors
Click here for information on “Hispanic Holiday Shopping Patterns” audio recording
Posted by Elena del Valle on December 2, 2009
When my budget is tight I strive to obtain as much as possible for my money. I examine purchases to make sure they offer the best value for money. In doing so I look closely at new and existing vendors. I’m most likely to patronize those vendors that offer the same value I have received in the past. Vendors that offer additional benefits compared to past purchases and existing options are the most likely to receive my business.
I am in good company thanks to the spreading economic crisis. Many, if not most, consumers face the same decision issues today. According to a recent Mintel (“a global supplier of consumer, product and media intelligence”) survey, a majority of shoppers said they always look at sale items before shopping for non-sale items, especially in department stores (64 percent), at mass merchandisers (53 percent) and at discount apparel stores (53 percent). Four in 10 shoppers said they spend a lot of time looking for clothing sales and shopping around for the lowest price.
That is why I find it puzzling and self defeating to see the increasing number of companies that decrease benefits for the same cost. To illustrate I will tell you about a favorite restaurant my husband and I used to visit regularly. Although the food was nothing to write home about for years we stopped there on weekends for a quick bite and to enjoy the stunning and extraordinary waterside setting the historic restaurant offered.
It was a popular restaurant. Often there was a long wait (an hour or more) for a table, longer for the section we liked. As the economy soured the crowed thinned. Now here’s where it gets interesting. As fewer guests came the restaurant management began cutting back on the quality and quantity of the food. The prices remained the same. The cloth napkins were replaced with paper napkins. The yummy Hawaiian bread and warm cornbread had to be requested instead of being brought automatically as in the past. After a while, the nice bread disappeared completely to be replaced with boring buns. The guacamole was excised from the fish tacos plate. It could be ordered for a supplement of $1. The portion size became smaller than ever and the quality of the food diminished. The prices remained the same.
Eventually, and worst of all, the quality of the food dropped so much I couldn’t eat it. For a while we had struggled with the state of the restaurant but kept on going hoping that the management would realize that taking good care of the loyal customers that remained was the best avenue to surviving difficult times. Instead things continued to worsen. After several more disappointing visits we stopped going altogether.
Last week the Air Transport Association predicted holiday traffic would drop 4 percent and others speculated that the drop in air traffic would be ever greater during what is historically one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. It’s no wonder with high unemployment, a deep recession and airline surcharges for holiday travel. It’s bad enough having to travel through crowded often ill designed, uncomfortable airports; and run through the gauntlet of airport safety checks, removing sweaters, belts, shoes, watches, and even jewelry to pass through; sometimes being wanded or patted down by a stranger; and obliging any instruction an arbitrary security agent provides to get from Point A to Point B on an overcrowded airplane (although there are fewer passengers than in past years the airlines have reduced flights leaving remaining flights overcrowded) when there is so much stress in our lives already.
If they want to improve their bottom line and customer loyalty, should airlines be offering better deals and more incentives; and doing everything they can to make it more pleasant and easier than ever for passengers to travel? Are they doing that already? Is adding luggage fees and holiday surcharges producing the results they desire? Are passengers likely to eagerly book when they return from full flights that results in increasingly less comfortable travel experiences?
It seems counter intuitive to raise prices and lower quality and quantity when everyone is cutting back budgets and looking to maximize value for money. And yet that seems to be what so many companies are doing. From a marketing perspective to draw traffic you offer an irresistible product or service or the perception of it. There are many examples of this. A prominent one is the ubiquitous iPhone, and iPod. Thus far Apple has survived, some would even say thrived while so many others have gone the bankrupt.
In the absence of a product the customer can’t resist the vendor can offer good or better value for money to sweeten the deal. Should smart executives increase marketing and public relations budgets to spread the word and remind the public of their brand, product, or service and prompt a purchase as soon as the customer is ready? Instead so many companies are doing the opposite, offering poor or lower quality and lesser value for money than in the past. Why then are they baffled to see their bottom line affected?
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 30, 2009
Manuel Wernicky, president, Adrenalina
Photo, radio ad: Adrenalina
A Spanish language Tecate beer radio ad dubbed Disclaimer by Adrenalina, the ad producer, is noteworthy because of its comic take on the disclaimer sections found in many ads. The ad, which explains why wimpy men who lack character should avoid drinking Tecate, was recently recognized with a silver trophy at the El Ojo de Iberoamérica Festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In a rapid-fire format, the ad indicates that Tecate discourages wimpy men from consuming the Mexican beer. The ad points out that listeners who own dogs named Puchi, Tinkerbell or Princess, or call a girlfriend Baby or Little Smurfette haven’t got what it takes to enjoy Tecate. The beer promoters set out to reaffirm Tecate’s image targeting Mexican men living in the United States who favor the brand.
The Disclaimer Tecate beer radio ad was recorded at the end of January 2009 in Miami and New York at a dual studio recording session at RedCar, Miami with Paco Olavarrieta, in-house voiceover talent and chief creative officer, for the disclaimer portion of the spot; and at Bond, New York with Mexican actor Marco Treviño.
The Adrenalina team for the 2009 Tecate Disclaimer radio spot included Manuel Wernicky, president, chief ideas officer and managing partner; Paco Olavarrieta, chief creative officer and managing partner; Ivar Rodríguez, associate creative director; Daniel Roversi, agency producer; and Yonathan Bendesky, brand leadership.
The ad has been airing via national and regional Spanish-language networks Univision Radio, ESPN Deportes Radio and Lieberman Media since April 2009. According to an agency spokesperson, Adrenalina presented the spot to consumers in research conducted this year and the Disclaimer ad received the most laughs, with consumers reporting the highest recall for the spot and saying that the spot was most memorable for it’s humorous message and use of colloquial phrases.
“El Ojo is further recognition that our team’s creative work resonates among our colleagues in the global advertising community,” said Wernicky.
Adrenalina, the lead agency for Tecate and Tecate Light, recently embarked on its third consecutive advertising and marketing programs for the brands’ distributor, Heineken USA via Cervecería Cuauhtemoc Moctezuma (CCM) of Monterrey, Mexico. New creative for both brands is expected to roll out in early 2010.
El Ojo de Iberoamérica is a marketing and advertising event created to showcase creativity and innovation in advertising, communication, marketing and entertainment in Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
Adrenalina, a New York minority-owned and managed ad agency seeks to create ideas that provoke engagement, experience and emotion between brands and consumers. MDC Partners is a partnership of entrepreneurial firms that offer marketing communications services to clients in North America, Europe and Latin America.
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 18, 2009
E Commerce trends by country - click to enlarge
Chart: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
According to Empowering E Consumers, a November 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), some of the benefits of the advent of the Internet for consumers around the world include increased competition and lower prices, greater product and services options than offline, and a choice of vendors from around the world at the convenience, time and location of the buyer’s preference.
The report finds that while the retail sector has suffered severely by the current economic crisis, e-commerce has prospered and even exhibited continued growth in many countries. Those trends are the result, in part, of consumers becoming more cost conscious, and increasingly comparison shopping online to save money.
For example, in the United States, while most offline retailers had low sales in the first quarter of 2009, online retail sales for 80 retailers rose by an average of 11 percent. There was a similar pattern in France where the French electronic commerce and distance selling federation estimated that, for the first quarter of 2009, e-commerce sales grew by 26 percent and should increase throughout the year by 20 to 25 percent.
E commerce serves as a business forum for consumers and businesses. Lately, more businesses are going online as a result of the recession. Attracted to the Internet as a means to increase visibility and markets at relatively low cost, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce showed marked growth. Most online sales in the United States were B2B generated, $3.1 trillion in sales in 2008 compared to $130 billion for sales to consumers.
OECD provides a forum for member governments to compare policy experiences, “seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and coordinate domestic and international policies.
Reach Hispanics online today with
“Marketing to Hispanics Online” audio recording
Identifying and characterizing the booming Hispanic online market
Joel Bary, Alex Carvallo and Matias Perel
Find out about
• The 16 million Latino online users
• Latino online users by gender
• What they do online
• Their language preferences
• How to reach Hispanic urban youth online
• What affects their online behavior
• What influences their purchases
Click here for information about “Marketing to Hispanics Online”
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 11, 2009
Kevin Wise, assistant professor, strategic communication University of Missouri
Photo: University of Missouri
People who search for information online are more likely to trigger greater emotional responses to unpleasant content compared to those who surf and encounter information more casually than those actively searching for it, according to a University of Missouri study funded internally and announced last week.
“If, as these data suggest, the cognitive and emotional impact of online content is greatest when acquired by searching, then Web site sponsors might consider increasing their advertising on pages that tend to be accessed via search engines,” said Kevin Wise, assistant professor of strategic communication and co-director of the Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects (PRIME) Lab at the University of Missouri. “How readers acquire messages online has ramifications for their cognitive and emotional response to those messages. Messages that meet readers’ existing informational needs elicit stronger emotional reactions.”
The results of the study were summarized in an article authored by Wise and Hyo Jung Kim. In the study, researchers, including Wise and two doctoral students, examined how searching for specific content versus surfing a news Web site affected readers’ emotional responses while reading news stories.
The researchers monitored participants’ heart rate, skin conductance and facial musculature to gauge their emotional responses to unpleasant news. The researchers found that unpleasant content triggered greater emotional responses when readers sought the information by searching rather than surfing. In future studies, Wise plans to study the effects of acquiring pleasant content on readers’ emotional responses.
The study, conducted among 92 participants over several months in 2007, indicates that information was better understood and remembered when individuals conducted specific searches for information. Participants came to the laboratory and selected/read news stories from a website (on a computer).
In a previous study, Wise tested the effects of searching and surfing on readers’ responses to images and found similar results. The study, “The Effect of Searching Versus Surfing on Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Online News,” was recently published in the Journal of Media Psychology.
The PRIME (Psychological Research on Information and Media Effects) Lab, part of the Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, is a research and teaching laboratory devoted to the study of how different features of media affect the way that people think, feel, and act. The staff conduct theory-driven, empirical research using psychophysiology and other behavioral science methods.
Target Latinos effectively by understanding how they shop
“Hispanic Holiday Shopping Patterns” audio recording
Manuel Delgado, CEO Agua Marketing, gives a presentation and participates in an extended Q&A discussion about
- Hispanic shopping patterns national survey
- Why Latino consumers may be more desirable than general market shoppers
- Hispanics holiday shopping patterns and behaviors
Click here for information on “Hispanic Holiday Shopping Patterns” audio recording
Posted by Elena del Valle on November 9, 2009
Hispanic U.S. Citizens by Country of Origin
Click on image to enlarge
While most people with an interest in Hispanic markets know that more than 60 percent of the United States Latino population is comprised of people of Mexican origin, few are aware of the breakdown by country of origin of the remainder. The remaining third come from Puerto Rico, Cuba, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador, and Peru.
Gathering information on ethnicity and country of origin can be challenging and accurate results require additional time and effort for demographic researchers. For example, the concept of ethnicity and country of origin is in itself complex. Individuals self-describe their ethnicity and country of origin relationship when responding to U.S. Census surveys. However, country of origin may differ from country of birth and both may differ from ethnicity. In other words, two individuals from the same family and born in the same country may respond differently to the same question. One may indicate he or she is Latino and the other may not.
Some people born in Los Angeles identify their country of origin as Mexico; some New York natives may also self describe their country of origin as the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico although the island is part of the United States.
At the same time, the percentage of United States citizens among Latinos varies by country of origin. For example, almost all Puerto Ricans (99.4 percent) are citizens. The groups with the next highest percent of citizens are Cuba, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Colombia all with more than 60 percent United States citizenship rates, according to updates released by the Pew Hispanic Center on Latino population groups and their characteristics last month.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, is a nonpartisan, non-advocacy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
