Online Hispanic Trends

Public-Private Collaboration to Increase Latino Academic Achievement

Univision, the Department of Education and the Gates Foundation have recently teamed up on an exciting three-year, multi-platform national education initiative called "Es El Momento" (The Moment is Now) aimed at improving academic achievement of Hispanic K-12 students. The campaign is focused on improving the high school graduation rate, which is currently at 55 percent for the Hispanic population as compared to 69 percent for their non-Hispanics peers.

In addition to PSAs, TV and radio, the campaign is offering a comprehensive web presence and mobile resources, including questions and answers with the popular motivational radio personality Dr. Isabel, a school locator widget and weekly mobile text alerts with relevant educational tips. Visitors will also be able to find local resources through website feeds in the future. 

This is a terrific example of public private partnerships creatively coming together to address the pressing needs of the community. We should see more of this happening on a regular basis.

Check out the online presence here or by clicking the image below.

Source: Hispanicad.com

Latino Internet Use Being Fueled by Growth in Previously Underrepresented Groups

The Pew Hispanic Center just released a very interesting new report - Latinos Online, 2006-2008: Narrowing the Gap.

The report looks compares and contrasts internet use patterns of native-born latinos, foreign-born latinos, blacks and whites.

Some of the key findings include:

• Internet use among Latino adults rose by 10 percentage points from 54% in 2006 to 64% in 2008, as compared to four points for whites and two points for blacks.
• This increase has been fueled by a growth in use by groups who have typically had very low rates of internet use - foreign-born latinos, those with lower educational levels, and those with lower household incomes.
• Although there were not large changes in the number of Latinos accessing the internet from home, there were significant increases in the the numbers using broadband, as well as for whites and blacks.

To promote consistency, the surveys were done via landline, and being that there was a significant increase in the numbers of Latinos that only use cell phones during this same period, the researchers concluded that the numbers in this report may underestimate Latino internet use.

To see the full report: Latinos Online, 2006-2008

Univision Launches New Vertical Site "Cocina"

Univision Communications just launched a new vertical called Cocina in response to the fact that the U.S. Hispanic audience spends a significant part of its budget on groceries and is interested in cooking and trying new recipes.

Per the Portada article, "...more than 11 million U.S. Hispanics report that they really enjoy cooking and trying new recipes."  And "Nearly 12 million U.S. Hispanics live in a household that spends $100+ on groceries in a week, that's 54 percent of all online Hispanics ages 18 and older."

The site will feature recipes, cooking tips from experts, videos, personalized content, user-generated content, a searchable database of recipes, and the Cocina widget that users can embed on their blogs and websites.  

General Mills is an exclusive sponsor of the Cocina widget and has category exclusivity in a number of its key areas - baking, snacks, and cereals to name a few.

Source: Portada

Univision Launching Ad Network to Reach the U.S. Hispanic Audience

Recognizing the potential of the quickly growing online Hispanic market, Univision announced the formation of the Univision Partner Group, a collection of Spanish-language websites in the U.S., Latin America and Spain that reach a significant number of U.S. Latinos.

Source: Mediaweek

Coke Taps Latinos Desire for Self-Improvement

In an interview conducted by Joe Kutchera, Reinaldo Padua, the assistant VP of Hispanic Marketing at Coca-Cola America talked about a new educational marketing initiative. 

In essence, when Hispanic customers buy coke, they receive a bilingual dictionary and a DVD with the first lesson from the Inglés sin Barreras collection. Thereafter, they can register and accumulate points and redeem these for one of the 12 volumes of the collection.

By doing its research, Coke was able to identify that for Latinos, happiness means being able to pursue their dreams, and one important factor in being able to do so in the U.S. is to have strong English language skills.

The initial results of thein-store and mobile campaign, "look very encouraging" said Mr. Padua. " The feedback we have gotten from consumers has been very positive. The feedback from our employees, our most important stakeholders, has also been positive. They love it and understand the value that it provides to the community. Customers also love the idea that we are helping the community in a tangible way."

Source: Media Post

Flock, Univision's Highly Customized Web Browser for the Online Hispanic Audience

Univision Interactive Media recently launched Flock, a highly customized web browser for the online Hispanic community.

Responding to Latinos' social nature and use of both social networking sites and email to communicate with friends and family, the browser offers entry points to these key online destinations. Easy entry points to these popular destinations has been astutely positioned with Univision's web content to create a uniquely branded experience for the online Hispanic market, both in English and Spanish, with the goal of keeping this important market close to home.

 

Source: Hispanicad.com

Citibank Launches Citi Mobile en Español for Smartphone Users

Seeking to gain and advantage on their competitors in the mobile online banking space and make further inroads into the growing Hispanic market, Citibank recently launched Citi Mobile en Español. In addition to to growing their client base, Citi hopes that this strategy will help with client retention as approximately 25 percent of their clients are Hispanic.

According to Pew Research, 50 percent of all Hispanics who speak English use a mobile device to access the Internet. Pew found that many of these users are bi-lingual and prefer doing business in Spanish, depending on the specific task or situation is, and that 30 percent go online daily through their mobile phones.

Source: American Banking News

Retail Banks Improving Outreach to Spanish-Speakers Online

A recent article in Reuters summarizes interesting research done by Corporate Insight.  The research indicates that 71% of retail banks have added foreign-language content to their websites and are actively reaching out to Spanish-speakers.

Recognizing the growth and increasing affluence of this group and the need to reach out to new markets in a competitive market, a number of banks are taking steps to better serve this market.

As Doug Miller, Senior Analyst for Banking and Cardsat Corporate Insight, says ""Recent immigrants to the United States are often identified as `under-banked, which is unsurprising since most banking information and services have traditionally been offered almost exclusively in English. As the
Spanish-speaking population of this country has grown in both size and affluence, top retail banks have come to recognize the importance of serving this group through Spanish language site content, customer service support and account statements."  

Bank of America and Citibank lead the pack when it comes to having fully functional Spanish-language websites. 

View additional details on what other banks are doing in the original Reuter's article. 

Lance Armstrong Foundation Launches Spanish-language Site for U.S. Hispanic Community

As part of its multimedia campaign, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has launched a Spanish-language version of its website to provide practical tools and useful information for cancer survivors, their families and caregivers within the Hispanic community in the United States.  

 

Read Juan Tornoe's interview with the Lance Armstrong Foundation on their Latino outreach efforts.

What happens when you search in Spanish on Google, Yahoo or MSN?

Joe Kutchera, the director of Spanish-language markets at ContextWeb, wrote a very interesting article on what happens when users search in Spanish on Google, Yahoo and MSN. 

He points out that users are often sent to websites in other countries, including Mexico, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries.

He gives examples using some common keywords, explains why this is happening, and also provides advise on what marketers can do to deal with this issue.

Read the full article on MediaPost.