Cohn & Wolfe INFUSE will provide cross-cultural expertise in branding, community relations, cause marketing, consumer insights and consulting to reach Hispanic, African-American, Asian American and LGBT communities. By utilizing Cohn & Wolfe’s extensive global network of offices – most notably in Asia and Latin America – the INFUSE team will have touch points throughout the world, providing invaluable on-the-ground knowledge sharing. Some of the practice’s newest clients include a major luxury spirits brand, a beloved household food item and a worldwide consumer hygiene brand.

“To effectively communicate with multicultural audiences today, brands must understand and leverage cultural nuance-that is, provide communities and consumers with ‘in-culture’ messages that resonate with their unique experiences and values. Cohn & Wolfe has been successfully doing this for years and bringing Kerri on board to drive the INFUSE brand will give us a strong platform to showcase this market-demanding strength,” says Liz Beck, US Consumer Lead.

Leading the practice is Kerri Allen, who joins Cohn & Wolfe with more than a decade of experience in multicultural communications as a bilingual PR practitioner and globally published journalist. Allen currently sits on the Executive Board of the Hispanic Public Relations Association and formerly served as Chair of PRSA’s Multicultural Communication Section.

“The latest census data shows that the U.S. is globalizing at breakneck speed, with more than 50% of national births now taking place to ‘minority’ parents. Multicultural is quickly becoming the central core of the U.S. consumer base. This is how businesses will grow and succeed in the years to come,” said Kerri Allen, “Cohn & Wolfe is dedicated to cutting-edge communications and is infusing every aspect of our business with a fresh understanding of America’s changing cross-cultural reality.”

In addition, the conference will culminate with the first-ever USH Idea Awards, presented by AHAA honoring the best and brightest creative content in the industry . It also will also feature the annual HispanicAd.com Account Planning Excelencia (HAPE), Media Planning Excelencia (HMPE) Awards and Executive of the Year Awards.

At AHAA’s Annual Conference, attendees will hear from the top brass of companies that understand the value in consistently allocating a healthy percentage of their budgets to Hispanic initiatives and that utilize a total market approach with multicultural at its core. The theme “Listen Up!” is important for Hispanic marketers of all disciplines who collaborate with their brand teams to make multicultural strategies a success. The AHAA conference will feature programs on advertising, public relations, digital and mobile, developed in conjunction with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The conference will feature plenary speakers John Winsor, CEO of Victors and Spoils and Felix Palau, CMO of Tecate for Heineken USA, among many others.

“We chose the theme of ‘Listen Up!’ to underscore our need to listen to clients and bring new solutions and strategies,” said Roberto Orci, chair of AHAA and CEO of Acento. “This conference highlights the best practices from a client perspective and equips members with strategic applications to better serve their clients.”

For more information on the AHAA Annual Conference or to register, please visit AHAA. Details will be posted on February 6, 2012.

About AHAA: Headquartered in McLean, VA, AHAA: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing represents the best minds and resources dedicated to Hispanic-specialized marketing. Companies trying to reach and connect with Hispanic consumers turn to AHAA members for unmatched cultural expertise and knowledge. As the voice of the Hispanic marketing industry since its founding in 1996, AHAA demonstrates the value of targeting Hispanics, showcases the impact of using AHAA member agencies, and provides forums for the discussion and dialogue between brands and industry professionals.

As we see every year, 2012 started with lots of predictions, resolutions and good intentions. The marketing industry is no exception, as we hear perspectives from many experts across different disciplines and specialties about what will and won’t happen in our industry. This is always fun reading and often inspires at least a few minutes of reflection. The challenge, however, is to put our new year’s resolutions into practice. As soon as we get back to our routine, making any significant change becomes increasingly difficult, and we settle for doing business as usual.

A recent NYTimes.com article reminded me to stay committed to one of my own resolutions: listen to people. The article highlights the fact that more than 18 million Latinos answered the question about race by checking the “other” box in the last census. It proceeds to conclude that this is “an indicator of the sharp disconnect between how Latinos view themselves and how the government wants to count them”. It’s an interesting assessment and I agree. Despite the fact that the question presents a list with 15 (that’s right, fifteen) race alternatives, 36% of the total Latino population still has opted for “none of the above describes me”. This is not a minor finding, and I dare to predict that this type of sentiment will gradually spread across a broader portion of the population in the U.S., well beyond the Latino community. Why? Because the country is progressively becoming more diverse in many aspects and traditional segmentation systems are failing to provide an accurate portrait of real life.

Census officials are probably struggling with this because a big reason for having a census in the first place is to eliminate ambiguity. But we’re likely to see more and more ambiguity if we continue to ask the same questions over and over. What happens if that 36% grows to 51%? Or 75%? At what point will someone decide to modify the questions? Should we even still care about splitting the country by race or ethnicity? Are those real indicators of how people think and behave?

It’s becoming apparent that trying to predict future trends in the same terms as we have understood the past is as futile of an exercise as comparing apples to carrots.

Another great piece of evidence showing a dramatic shift in how people view themselves is a 2011 quantitative research project conducted by my team at LatinWorks. We asked 1,200 people to answer a series of self-identification questions that went beyond the traditional questions of origin and language, in order to get a deeper understanding of how people are relating to culture. The experiment had a startling outcome and helped debunk the acculturation model. First of all, we discovered that growth and diversity has already created sub-segments within each one of the three typical acculturation buckets (unacculturated/bicultural/acculturated). Second, asking new questions helped us realize that sometimes there are greater similarities across acculturation levels than within one particular bucket. In other words, acculturation does not necessarily determine attitudinal or behavioral patterns. Consequently, we should question whether it’s still an effective segmentation tool.

Below is a sample question that we used in the study (What team would you root for if your country of origin played the US during an important sporting event?) and the impact it had throughout the spectrum of respondents (based on levels of acculturation). The shades of grey indicate similarities and differences in comparison to the levels of acculturation, demonstrating that people within a particular acculturation bucket (e.g. bicultural) don’t think all the same way.

The message that consumers are sending us is clear. As much as we love putting people in boxes to make our lives easier as marketers, the reality is that people are a lot more multi-dimensional and fluid today, their vision of the world being a lot broader. They’d rather not be labeled.

We need to move away from self-limiting tools and obsolete definitions. We must be creative in order to understand and connect with the human truth, graciously allowing standard methods to fade while adopting/inventing new ones.

Is this a simple task? Certainly not. But even if it may feel as though someone is pulling the rug from underneath our feet, we will most likely be better off in the long run.

I remember sitting in a focus group last year and hearing a 17 year old Latino named Marco react to the “bicultural” label: I don’t think of myself in those terms, I just am.

Let’s embrace the ambiguity of today’s evolving cultural marketplace, along with the richness that it brings. Let’s listen to Marco.

To download report CLICK HERE.

Almost 80 percent of senior marketers said they wanted their influence to grow as business strategy and development leaders. They see improving their relationship with the senior executive team as a critical way to get there, with 38 percent saying C-level relationship building is the skill they most want to improve. But in a world powered by a technology-empowered customer, the number-one skill to improve on is digital: 40 percent of CMOs say increasing their technology savvy is their top self-improvement goal, a dramatic increase from the previous survey in 2008.

“For CMOs to prove the value of their role and justify the marketing investment, they must clearly illustrate the ROI of marketing plans, influence the understanding of their brand strategy across other functional areas of the company, and engage technology and sales peers to create a consolidated vision of how to succeed with customers,” said David M. Cooperstein, Forrester vice president and practice leader serving CMO & Marketing Leadership Professionals.

While relationship building with the senior executive team is seen as a top area of improvement, not all relationships are created equal. Despite the rise in importance of technology and digital media, CMOs are still prioritizing relationships with the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and head of sales ahead of the chief information or technology officer. Only 30 percent of senior marketers see this relationship as important to develop, indicating a wide gap between the two departments. The survey also indicates that CMOs are increasingly recognizing the need to act as company leaders, not just marketing leaders, through trends such as embracing and championing the “voice of the customer” and ensuring that marketing becomes the growth engine for the organization. In fact, 42 percent of CMOs claim that representing the voice of the customer is one of the most critical factors in ensuring personal success as a marketer.

“Companies realize that it is very difficult to defend a competitive advantage mainly based on cost efficiency — they are now moving to customer intimacy to drive differentiation,” said John Abele, global managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles’ Marketing, Sales & Strategy Officers Practice. “This shift in focus has to become part of the DNA of leading organizations. It will be a journey, and we see CEOs leaning on the CMO to lead the expedition. This will require visionary leadership and an understanding of functional implications that will need to change to fully embrace this approach.”

For more information CLICK HERE.

The ANA survey found that since 2006, the percent of marketers developing and executing integrated marketing programs for all brands/products/services has steadily grown:

2011 – 51 %
2008 – 33 %
2006 – 19 %

Additionally, marketers are more optimistic about the quality of their company’s integrated marketing efforts, with 42 percent of respondents rating its effectiveness as excellent or very good. That is up from 25 percent of marketers surveyed in 2008.

The perceived increase in effectiveness of integrated marketing efforts may be attributed to the greater availability and use of newer media platforms as marketing tools, which allow for better targeting and enhanced metrics.

From 2008 to 2011 there was a significant increase in the percentage of marketers who rated mobile marketing and social media as being “important” or “very important” to their marketing programs.

Nearly three out of four marketers surveyed said that they measure their IMC success by sales growth / volume (74 percent), while 61 percent utilized brand tracking studies for measuring IMC success. Brand tracking typically includes metrics such as awareness, usage, attitude, perception and purchase intent.

“The ANA has been addressing the topic of integrated marketing for over 60 years,” said Bill Duggan, Group EVP of the ANA. “The tools available to marketers have changed in many ways with the explosion in media options, but the importance of integrated marketing is greater than ever as demonstrated by the survey results.”

This survey was conducted online by the ANA during September and October of 2011. This is the fourth survey in eight years conducted by the ANA, seeking the opinions of marketers on their integrated marketing programs. Past surveys were conducted in 2003, 2006 and 2008. Respondents included members of the ANA panel who are periodically surveyed on a range of timely, industry-related topics. In total, 107 client-side marketers participated.

*Due to the recent nature of mobile marketing and social media, these options were not included in the 2003 or 2006 studies.

For more information CLICK HERE.

Research from social marketing software firm Awareness Inc. indicates US marketers plan to do just that this year. The December 2011 survey found that the leading area for new social media marketing investments in 2012 would be increasing marketer presence across platforms, cited by 70% of respondents.

For some marketers, that will mean a new presence on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. While the vast majority of US marketers already use these sites for marketing, some laggards plan to join them there this year.

But smaller social sites with less current marketer usage will benefit even more. Nearly one in five respondents said they would begin marketing on YouTube in 2012. And though just 10% of marketers said they would have a new presence on Tumblr, that is on top of only 15% already using it, for an increase of more than 66%. Proportionally, usage of SlideShare and online forums would increase even more than that.

By number of marketers, blogs will be the greatest beneficiary of new efforts, with 28% of respondents saying they were not currently using them but would this year. Among the most experienced social media marketers surveyed, 91% said they planned to increase their use of blogs.

For more information at

Just 9 percent of senior marketers believe traditional ad agencies are doing a good job of evolving and extending their service capabilities in the digital age, in contrast to 22 percent who view their agencies as struggling to transition their business models and service offerings. Another 51 percent of the 250-plus senior marketers surveyed in the CMO Council study see their agencies as playing catch-up with regards to new technology, or acquiring but not integrating digital marketing capabilities.

The CMO Council’s in-depth analysis of how its 6,000 global members are “optimizing marketing partner performance and value in a digital world” was conducted during the second half of 2011 with partner Ace Metrix, a leader in applying technology solutions and analytics to measure and improve advertising effectiveness. Included in the report are best-practice discussions with more than 20 leading brand advertisers. Among them were Colgate-Palmolive, Coca-Cola, Kia Motors, Safeway, The Hershey Company, Dunkin’ Donuts, Crayola, Allstate, Wyndham Worldwide, Ricoh, Ocean Spray, PepsiCo, L’Oreal, Best Buy, Weight Watchers, Welch’s, The North Face, Farmers Insurance, Sports Authority, and Renault. A free summary of the study, along with a comprehensive report with both quantitative and qualitative findings, is available from the CMO Council website (www.cmocouncil.org).

Only 44 percent of marketers surveyed report they have a formal scorecard for rating agency performance on an annual basis compared to 52 percent who do not. Even fewer marketers (23 percent) have solutions or hosted services to enable agency benchmarking and evaluation, and just 24 percent have developed best-practice models or formal guidelines for client/agency relationship management. More significantly, 65 percent do not employ any form of ad scoring or tracking services. This number is noteworthy, says the CMO Council, given the huge level of media and creative spend through agency partners. Compounding the problem, 38 percent of marketers rated their ability to extract optimal value and return from agency partnerships as poor or in need of improvement.

“There’s an underlying level of frustration among senior corporate marketers worldwide when it comes to agency contributions to business value creation, strategic thinking, and digital marketing development,” noted Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council, whose members control more than $300 billion in aggregated marketing spend each year. “Our members report quite a bit of switching of digital marketing resources, as well as a view that big, global agencies don’t have a truly integrated offering and capacity to execute in an effective, localized way in emerging markets.” As a result, many are turning to specialized boutiques in regional markets that have deep domain knowledge in specific geographies and vertical industry sectors.

Traditional agencies are likely to be challenged in their retention of client relationships, as 48 percent of “More Gain, Less Strain” survey respondents report they are hiring specialized digital marketing solution and service providers to implement new social, mobile, and interactive strategies. Another 47 percent plan to build internal capabilities and use incumbent agency services less. Furthermore, 45 percent are bringing in outside consultants to help set up and structure digital programs.

Relative to consolidation or change of global agency rosters, 49 percent of marketers report this will or may happen over the next 12 months, and another 15 percent are not sure. That leaves only 36 percent firmly committed to their agency relationships in 2012.

When it comes to new areas of outside service provisioning and agency use, those surveyed by the CMO Council are focused on the following priorities:

- Mobile apps and mobile content (62 percent)
- Social media engagement and buzz building (60 percent)
- Multi-channel digital marketing, including email, mobile messaging, social, and web (52 percent)
- Web design, development, and performance improvement (51 percent)
- Search marketing optimization—paid and organic (51 percent)
- Customer relationship marketing (47 percent)

So, what’s contributing the most to stress and strain in client/agency relationships? Marketers responding to the CMO Council survey ranked the top five causes of pain and friction in their agency relationships:

- Lack of an agreed-upon set of analytics and metrics that defines success and failure
- Limited knowledge and comprehension of the client’s business
- Lack of value-added strategic thinking
- Pricing and budgeting issues
- Integration of marketing plans and services

Aside from points of discord, just 24 percent of marketers say they are satisfied with their current level of marketing automation and partner collaboration, while only half are comfortable with their agency or vendor procurement processes.

Given the challenge, complexity, and cost of evaluating advertising effectiveness, it is not surprising that 58 percent of marketers are unsatisfied with the current process; few have embraced new platforms and solutions in this area, and only 28 percent say they are comfortable with their current protocols. Interestingly, 53 percent of marketers stated that creative effectiveness measurement was a part of their agency evaluation process compared to 40 percent who did not address this area of agency performance.

“Marketing expenditures are under incredible pressure from both CFOs and CMOs in today’s business environment. Objective, quantifiable measurement of creative effectiveness is a requirement—not just to address the concerns around accountability, but also to provide a platform for communication between the client and agency,” noted Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix, a sponsor of the study. “It is critical for companies to adopt measurement tools and technologies that can be deployed broadly within and across organizations because the client/agency relationship is far broader in its organizational scope than at any time in the past.”

The study highlights the move from agency retainer- to project-based billing, which has been embraced by more than 40 percent of marketers. Notably, 36 percent are also requiring a wider range of services for the same monthly fee, placing even greater pressure on agency margins and efficiency. One-third of marketers are now linking agency compensation to performance outcomes, and 34 percent are requiring better financial controls and forecasting of agency spend. A tangible number (28 percent) say they are reducing or eliminating commissions, margins, and mark-ups. Clearly, agencies are under increased financial pressure and have a greater need for shared risk, business accountability, and mutual financial reward.

For more information CLICK HERE.

The purpose of the survey was to glean insights relative to Client and Agency expectations going into 2012 – regarding topics such as marketing spend levels, staff support, media usage, use of specwork, and new business activities.

Our hope is that the following key findings and implications from this study are of value to you as you formulate your plans for the start of this coming year and as you move throughout 2012. We also hope we can be a part of making this business more fun.

57% ofAgency principals in our survey stated that the ad business isn’t as fun as it used to be. Saddens us…and makes us want to work harder to make the relationships between Marketers and Agencies more transparent, better functioning, and more exciting – for both parties.

To download report CLICK HERE.

The Company behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust illustrates the challenging consumer landscape facing today’s marketing and communications executives. The research identifies six key insights revealing a world where consumers no longer just buy products based on their own merits but also shop by company reputation.

“Consumers are using their dollars as a vote of confidence in companies they trust,” said Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross. “As our research confirms, corporate and brand reputations are now nearly indivisible. The company standing behind the brand assures consumers that they can trust the quality, ethics and safety of the brands they are buying.”

The New Realities of Corporate Reputation

The importance of a company’s reputation matters more than ever and when unified with the reputation of its product brands creates one powerful “enterprise” brand. As Weber Shandwick’s Global Corporate Chair Micho Spring said, “A strong corporate reputation is essential to unlocking the full value of the enterprise and strengthening its brands, products and services as a result.”

Weber Shandwick’s research reveals six new realities on the interdependence of corporate and brand reputation:

1. Corporate brand is as important as the product brand(s). The leading reasons the vast majority of executives (87 percent) believe that a strong corporate brand carries as much weight as strong product brands is their recognition that product brands benefit from the overall reputation of the company (65 percent) and that people care about the companies behind the brands they buy (55 percent). Executives in China and Brazil are even more likely to agree in the equal prominence of corporate and product brands (96 percent and 93 percent, respectively).

2. Corporate reputation provides product quality assurance. Products are the beneficiaries of strong corporate reputations. Over two-thirds of consumers report avoiding products made by companies they do not like and checking labels to see who the parent company is.

70 percent avoid buying a product if they don’t like the company behind the product

67 percent are increasingly checking product labels to see what company is behind the product

61 percent get annoyed when they can’t tell what company is behind a product

56 percent do research to learn about the companies that make what they buy

56 percent hesitate to buy products if they can’t tell who makes them

Consumers are exerting greater control over what brands they buy. In fact, when asked on an open-ended basis, consumers often used the word “assurance” to describe the value of the company behind the brand. To many, a highly-regarded corporate reputation engenders good feelings about a company’s products and importantly, provides assurance that the brands will be of high quality, ethically sourced and made responsibly. As one consumer said, “It is the company you are financially supporting when you buy its product. We have too many choices to buy a product from a company we don’t like.”

3. Any disconnect between corporate and product reputation triggers sharp consumer reaction. Over one-half of consumers (54 percent) report being surprised to find out that a product or service they liked was made by a company they did not like. When asked what they do in response, surprised consumers said they most often stop purchasing the product (40 percent) or search online to dig deeper into what other products are made by the company (34 percent). Surprise about a product’s lineage does not usually work to the company’s benefit – surprised consumers are twice as likely to stop buying the product as they are to continue buying it.

4. Products drive discussion, with reputation close behind. Wrong-doing overshadows right-doing. Consumers were asked what they talk about when they discuss companies. At the top of the list is products — nearly seven in 10 consumers (69 percent) say they frequently or regularly discuss how they feel about a product they bought. Also included among their top five talking points are customer service, how employees are treated, company scandals or wrong-doing, and their feelings about the company as a whole (its reputation). Consumers report that they are more likely to discuss corporate scandals and wrong-doing (43 percent) than corporate good deeds (37 percent), environmental protections (31 percent) and community services (29 percent).

5. Consumers shape reputation instantly. What sources of influence move consumers’ perceptions of companies? Not surprisingly, consumers say that word of mouth is the leading influence (88 percent) when it comes to impacting opinions of companies. Also influential are online reviews (83 percent) and online search results (81 percent). Brazilian consumers rate more traditional sources about companies — news sources, awards and advertising — as significantly more important than consumers in the other three markets.

6. Corporate reputation contributes to company market value. Most admired status carries more weight than financial earnings. Executives estimate that, on average, 60 percent of their firms’ market value is attributable to its reputation. This high value explains why companies have ramped up their reputation-building activities, with the vast majority of executives (86 percent) reporting that their companies increased their efforts to build reputation over the past few years.

For consumers and executives alike, the reputation of a company is perceived as more important than positive financial earnings. More than half of consumers say they are more confident in buying products from a company with a most admired standing than one with a positive share price forecast. Nearly six in 10 executives say they would rather see their companies in the news for a most admired standing than a positive share price forecast. The findings imply that both consumers and executives now recognize that reputation is long-lasting and enduring while financial performance can be cyclical and short-term.

Weber Shandwick’s research highlights how consumers want assurance that their well-earned dollars, yuan, pounds or reais are being spent on products produced by companies that share their values. They have higher expectations for the companies and the brands they like and will not hesitate to turn their backs when they are disappointed or led astray.

As Spring remarks, “Through this proprietary research and approach to creating one powerful enterprise brand voice, we help companies build and protect corporate reputation and drive strong business results.”

For more information CLICK HERE.