No one mentioned golf. Or three-hour lunches. Or just leaving it to the agencies to figure it all out.
Rather, the quintet of marketers at B&C and Multichannel News' Hispanic TV Summit Marketing Roundtable, "Driving Growth of Hispanic Audiences," all described a relentless need to refine their methods. Staying relevant, they told moderator Adriana Waterston, senior VP of marketing and business development for Horowitz Research, means being willing to continually tweak approaches to reaching viewers.
"Consumers have so many options for how they can access content," said Stacie M. de Armas, VP of community alliances, events and engagement for Nielsen. "We have to look at content and delivery, all the time."
Millie Zdziebkowski, senior product manager, multicultural services at Comcast, noted the company more than doubled the amount of On Demand content available across devices over the last year (45 networks available at Xfinity.com/Latino and 30 Latino networks on the Xfinity TV Go app). "We always need to be responsive in that way," she said.
Speaking of responsiveness, a smooth multiplatform consumer experience is increasingly crucial, argued Geetanjali Dhillon, VP of marketing and digital media for Sony's getTV, Sony Movie Channel and Cine Sony Television. In fact, she twice offered a mantra, "Design is the new black," later urging Summit attendees to "think digital first."
One reason for the continual re-examination of marketing methods is the changing makeup of the audience. Joe Luis Valderrama, president and CEO of Hispanic Group Corp., came armed with some eye-opening statistics.
"It's important to realize that Hispanic viewers are no longer immigrants," he said. "Seven in 10 are U.S. citizens." Age is another key metric, he added, noting surveys finding the average age of U.S. Hispanics is just 27.
That youthfulness means ready embrace of digital platforms, said Victor Garcia-Bory, multicultural marketing director for Cablevision. "The way we connect with this audience is we help them stay mobile and connected," he said. "We offer them materials that talk to them across platforms and units and languages."
