Annual HMC Summit: CEOs see progress in Hispanic marketing

“This is the first time I’m seeing real changes and I feel very positive about the fact that in five years we’ll be so much better placed than we are today. So for that reason I’m feeling good,” said Publicis CEO Dave Penski about the growth of Hispanic and multicultural marketing. Penski was taking part along with GroupM CEO Kirk McDonald, dentsu Media CEO Doug Rozen and Omnicom Media Group CEO Ralph Pardo in the first conference of the Annual Hispanic Marketing Council (HMC) Summit, under the title Follow The Growth: Engage the U.S. Hispanic Audience to Achieve DEI at Scale, and moderated by Donna Speciale, president of Advertising, Sales & Marketing at TelevisaUnivision, Inc. “I believe we’re moving forward. We’re headed in the right direction. We attracted 62 new clients (to the HMC) last year, but there are probably still some 300 to 400 clients that are not yet going after the Hispanic audience,” Speciale said. Talking points at the meeting revolved around the steps each agency has taken to convince its clients to invest more in the Hispanic and multicultural markets. But they also noted the need for a trustworthy measurement of the multicultural audience, in which the vital element is the business, the evaluation of each client’s experience in this market, and in working together. “It’s not up to just one person. We’re all collectively kicking the ball ahead,” Speciale said. “We need to prioritize our objectives and make sure we’re serving communities that have long been ignored,” Penski said. “I believe the majority of our clients are not just tracking minority spending but also their specific purchases. I believe that’s one of the things we have to talk to them about.” McDonald and Pardo underscored the importance of a client-by-client focus. “What we really have to do is follow each client through his own experiences,” said McDonald, who explained that GroupM has created a kind of register where each client can “analyze his investment in the multicultural market through many different lenses. How many dollars does each one earmark for the target audience? How many go to the creator or to the social circles and contexts created? Questions that need answers so we both understand where we stand with our audience and on social media.” “One of my observations has been that we must probably move on to marketing organizations more integrated on the client side,” Pardo said. “You have to ask yourself whether a separate multicultural group is still needed to take care of that area in your organization. Or should it be more embedded and interwoven?” For the CEO of Omnicon Media Group, it’s necessary to think in terms of integrated teams that can deal successfully with all these audiences from the start instead of bringing in a specialist. For his part, Rozen said that last year in Dentsu they brought together 11 units from different media and got them working together. “When we did that we centered on the idea of economic empowerment and how we can see five key elements coming together: helping media owners who are diverse minorities build wealth, representation and community and connect with us; how we get involved beyond investment in order to really push strategic changes; how we eliminate barriers and provide access to our teams and the teams of our clients; how we create better back-and-forth communications and, finally, what we hear from all of us, how to create opportunities for company development,” he said.