latino lingo

There's an interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle on how Spanish radio helped spread the word of planned protests in L.A. against some of the proposed immigration reform.

While this isn't a forum for debating political issues, I bring up this point since the article says protest organizers credit radio stations for the unexpected 500,000 people that showed up.

It's hard to think of a parallel example of mainstream media getting behind a major societal issue and making it even bigger.

This effort also shows the power of grassroots efforts in the Hispanic community.

I'd be retired by now if I had a quarter for every time an organization's approach to marketing to Hispanics was to hire a Hispanic. While I stongly believe being of Hispanic origin is critical, so is knowing something about marketing and communication, and about the market being targeted. Being Hispanic isn't enough.

Chief Marketing Officer Magazine has an article in its latest issue that discusses the debate about wheter it takes a Latino to market to Latinos. (Thanks to my collegue Norm Morneau for alerting me to the story).

Pretty good read.

Hispanic Business is reporting that advertising revenues for Spanish-language television grew 16.9 percent in 2005, according to preliminary figures from Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Spanish-language TV ranked second in percentage growth behind Internet advertising, and ahead of third-place cable TV.