Hispanics Rush to Get Online with Cell Phones

A new report from market research firm Mintel shows that online Hispanic adults are quickly surpassing other demographic groups in acquiring new online communication skills.

I belive that Niños are our Futuro

1 out of 4 kids in kindergarten is Hispanic, more than triple the rate during the 1970s, according to the U.S. Census.

In addition, the report stated that Hispanic kids make up 53% of nursery schools serving 4-year-old children, up from 21 percent in 1987.

Interesting, but not surprising. Yet, toy manufacturers as a whole spend less than 2% of their overall marketing budgets in the Hispanic market.

Beyond marketing, companies need to consider the future workforce. As baby boomers continue to age and retire, they will increasingly be replaced by Hispanics.

No, you're not effectively reaching bicultural Latinos via the general market

The agency Dieste created, Diestepedia, a wiki of Hispanic phrases and culture (brilliant idea, BTW), and AdAge is running some of the words and definitions.

The latest is, "Bicultural," a word they say is, "certainly the least understood and most poorly used in Hispanic advertising." Completely agree!

I thought I'd paste some of the definition to help squash the misconception out there that bicultural Hispanics are effectively reached via the general market. This misconception, routinely spread by many general market agencies to their clients, is a common headache for specialized Hispanic marketing agencies. Clients, who are trusting in the counsel of their agencies as they should, are misdirected into thinking their campaigns are reaching Hispanics and thus do not allocate any (or perhaps less than they should) resources to Hispanic market creative and Spanish-language media.

Here's part of Diestepedia's entry on "Bicultural":

Bicultural as Bilingual
Although these words are frequently used interchangeably, they are really quite different. Bicultural Hispanics have surpassed 60% of the population, according to Synovate, but people speaking English and Spanish (indiscriminately and with no preference for either) barely make up 20% of the population. While it's possible to be bicultural to some degree or another, you can either speak two languages perfectly or you cannot. However, this is just a theoretical difference. In practice, most research and marketing companies abandon the category of pure bilingualism by asking people for their language of preference. Then, they qualify anyone who can speak some degree of both English and Spanish as bilingual.

One consequence here is that marketers tend to assume that bicultural Hispanics speak English fairly well. So, they ask why they should translate anything at all to Spanish. Well, maybe they shouldn't. In the "wiki-words" of an interactive expert: When a client asks me, "Why should I translate?" I answer, "You shouldn't. You should change your content, not your language, and give people options, because the freedom to choose how to interact with the world is the essence of being bicultural."

Ignoring Hispanic market one nail in Rocky Mountain News' demise

As many of you know, the Rocky Mountain News -- the 150-year-old newspaper -- close abruptly a few weeks ago. What is interesting is that in a Time Magazine column written by a former employee, the paper's ignoring of the growing Hispanic market in Colorado was cited as one of the strategic blunders.

"We the People" Series on NBC Nightly News

Please check out the week-long series on the news with Brian Williams. Last night's segment focused on general market companies reaching out the the Hispanic market's rising purchasing power. The series is available online at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29352466