Directo Day at DMDays

I attended a couple of sessions today at DMDays' Directo Day, focusing on hispanic-targeted marketing. The first session, called "A Brave New World: How Companies are Successfully Marketing to U.S. Hispanics" offered a fundamental view of the sector and featured several top marketers including from Allstate Insurance Company, Hewlett-Packard, SureFit and Iceland Health. The bottom line? Don't underestimate this market -- it is soon to be a $1 trillion market -- and don't lump Hispanics into one target group, since much depends on the level of acculturation among its members, and there are also a wide variety of Spanish-speaking cultures in Latin and South America. Also: Hispanic marketing isn't just about translating words, as in translating your Web site and direct mail pieces, but its about translating ideas and making them relate to this particular audience. Word of mouth is also key to this group, which has extremely strong family ties, and while as a group Hispanics are represented less online, those that are connected are even more engaged than the general population.