idaconcpts » U.S. Hispanics

HootSuite Talks to Spanish Speaking Community

Damian Davila — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:56:54 +0000

Owl-Quixote

On April 21, 2011 there are several websites down. Among the affected are HootSuite, Reddit, Foursquare and Quora. The problems appear to be caused by an issue affecting the Amazon Web Services. The company claims that are working to resolve the problem. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Amazon Relational Database Service and Amazon Elastic Beanstalk also appear to be experiencing problems. The issues were all visible on 4/21/2011 at Amazon’s AWS Service Health Dashboard.

While critics may be quick to point the drawbacks of cloud computing, it is important to keep a cool head and keep a full picture of cloud computing: benefits and drawbacks. Organizations that really heavily on cloud computing need to have an appropriate plan of action to tackle downtime problems.

The HootSuite Case

(click for larger image of HootSuite’s message in English and Spanish)

From the image above, you can see that HootSuite is “struggling today due to widespread outage problems” and ” working diligently with our upstream providers to resolve the conundrums so we can be back online as soon as possible”.

Then, Hootsuite goes on to present the same message in Spanish.

Estamos experimentando algunos problemas

¡Oh no! Parece que una gran cantidad de servicios en Internet están teniendo problemas debido a una interrupción de los servicios generalizada. Estamos trabajando con nuestros proveedores de hosting para resolver la situación cuanto antes. Muchísimas gracias por vuestra paciencia.

Si no puedes esperar a enviar un tweet, puedes utilizar la web de Twitter

Extra points on use of accent marks, use of vuestra, and signos de exclamación.

Why HootSuite is Doing This?

Simple.

Hispanics made up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Savvy Internet startups should keep these 2 facts in mind.

Los Links Son Malos

Damian Davila — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:08:48 +0000

According to Dr. Korzenny from the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Latinos appear to consume more digital content.

Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that U.S. Latinos is part of the recovery in advertising spending worldwide.

Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013. The U.S. Latino presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as U.S. Latino Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

A company that is truly aware of this trend is Microsoft with its current Bing TV ads called ‘Los Links’.

Why U.S. Latinos Matter

According to the Immigration Informaiton Source website, in 2006, 47.2 percent of immigrants reported Hispanic or Latino origins. Therefore, it is not a suprise that Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan reported that of marketers that target minority groups, 95% tailor messages to Latin Americans. However there is still much to be learned about the field. Click here for an insight into how to approach the U.S. Hispanic market.

As mentioned earlier, the U.S. Latino presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Consider the 2 tables below:

Los Links Son Malos

As of June 23, 2010, Microsoft has released two episodes of the popular ‘Los Links Son Malos’ ad campaign.

Here’s Episode Uno.

And here’s Episode Dos.

Why ‘Los Links Son Malos’ is a Smart Strategy

Rather than forcing U.S. Latinos into a Spanish-only version of Bing, Microsoft targets U.S. Latinos directly and lets them decide whether this is a good option for them. Mixed context in English and Spanish that is triggered by contextual cues (e.g. telenovelas, different Spanish accents, etc) appears to be savvy strategy, according to Dr. Korzenny.

On top of that, U.S. Latinos do appear to consume more digital content than other ethnicities in the U.S., specifically TV and online video.

Conclusion

Stand out from other companies targeting the U.S. Latinos audience not by forcing them to use a Spanish-only version but let them decide what’s best for them. However always keep in mind the specific geographic location that you’re planning to target. For example, While U.S. Hispanics do share some commonalities, consider that Texas has a more predominant Mexican presence, while Florida has a more predominant Cuban and South American presence.

Latin America leads the recovery in advertising spending worldwide

Damian Davila — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:33:22 +0000

In June 30, 2009, we reviewed at idaconcpts that talking about Latinos as a group is difficult because this group has so many commonalities with various ethnic groups, that trying to seggregate websites between Latino and non-Latino is a strategy that spells disaster.

According to Dr. Korzenny from the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Hispanics appear to consume more digital content. Therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Latin America is part of the recovery in advertising spending worldwide.

Even though the total advertising spending in Latin America is much smaller than that in North America, (ranging from 18% to 21 from 2009 to projections for 2010 and 2011 by eMarketer) savvy marketers, Internet startups, and companies in general, should be aware of 3 obvious trends:

1. Latin America holds the key for a better understanding of the Hispanic market in the U.S.

2. According to eMarketer, Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013.

3. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Talking about Hispanics as a whole group is difficult

Damian Davila — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:15:01 +0000

I’m a big fan of The e-Marketer Daily newsletter and on 06/26/09 I received two very interesting articles on the presence of U.S. Latinos on the web. The first one is titled Hispanics Online: No Mas E-Barrios and the second one is Looking at Hispanic Behavior Online.

The first article provides some interesting stats on Internet use in the U.S. by race/ethnicity.

Hispanics make up 12.3% of the total US Internet population in 2009, and that number will increase to 13.9% in 2013. The U.S. Hispanic presence in the Internet is not only going to increase in quantity but also in quality as Hispanic U.S. Internet users are poised to have the highest purchasing power.

Among marketing organizations, the competition to grab the U.S. Hispanic buck is intense. Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan reported that of marketers that target minority groups, 95% tailor messages to Latin Americans, 76% target African Americans, and 38% focus on Asian Americans, according to a survey released in November by the trade group Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and marketing agency Mkgt. That’s up from 86%, 60%, and 35%, respectively, in 2003, according to the research.

This has a lot of implications for online marketers who want to be culturally sensitive, while being cost-efficient at the same time. The main problem, as Dr. Felipe Korzenny, Director of the Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication at the Florida State University, states, is that:

Hispanics have a lot of commonalities, and it’s OK to talk about a group that has these sorts of common roots and interests. It doesn’t work well to try to segregate people. I don’t think it works to say, “This is a site for Hispanics and this is a site for others.”

Forcing Hispanic U.S. Internet users into Hi5 (the most popular social network in Latin America and no, it’s not Google’s Orkut, that’s in Brazil) and Myspace versions in Spanish is not the correct strategy. It’s all about personal choice, let the user decide what’s best for him or her.

That is the reason why MySpace has both—I mean having people having two sites, one in Spanish and one in English—but that doesn’t mean that the Spanish-language site is for Hispanics only, or that the English-language site is for non-Hispanics only. There’s a lot of overlap.

Mixed context in English and Spanish that is triggered by contextual cues appears to be savvy strategy, according to Dr. Korzenny. The good news: when compared to other ethnicities, U.S. Hispanics do appear to consume more digital content.

However, making any generalizations about U.S. Hispanics is always a mistake. The easiest example: location, location, location.

If you use the same strategy in Miami, FL, that you used in Dallas, TX, you shouldn’t be surprised to get mixed results. While U.S. Hispanics do share some commonalities, consider that Texas has a more predominant Mexican presence, while Florida has a more predominant Cuban and South American presence. Put it this way: imagine if you were to use Canadian slang to target a British and Australian audience, would it make sense? After all, they all speak English, right? That’s the most common mistake of companies that purchase one-size-fits-all, prepackaged marketing solutions.

Marketers should never throw out the window marketing fundamentals when dealing with U.S. Hispanics. There is no easy answer. Only one thing is certain: do your homework, research, research, research.