HispanicTrending

Immigration reform: Building costs could soar

Up to 40% of home building is done by undocumented aliens. But no one's talking about what a crackdown could do to new home costs.

May 31, 2006
By Jon Birger and Jenny Mero

(FORTUNE Magazine) - For the home building industry, the immigration debate raging in Washington is anything but abstract. It's the biggest issue nobody wants to talk about.

Frank Fuentes, president of the Hispanic Contractors Association, queried his 20 largest member firms about speaking with FORTUNE, and not one was willing.

"They're scared to death of being raided," says Fuentes.

By FORTUNE's estimate, up to 40 percent of new-home construction in the U.S. is being done wholly or partly by undocumented immigrants. Fuentes suspects the percentage in his home state of Texas is closer to 80 percent.

According to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center, 36 percent of insulation workers, 29 percent of roofers, and 28 percent of drywall installers are "unauthorized workers."

Big builders don't employ construction workers, legal or illegal. They hire subcontractors that in turn hire the workers who do the actual sawing and hammering.

"The entire home building business is outsourced," says A.G. Edwards analyst Greg Gieber. It's unclear whether this setup will protect builders should the feds start enforcing immigration laws more vigorously.

In May, Fischer Homes, a leading builder in Kentucky and Indiana, was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and four Fischer supervisors were charged with harboring illegal aliens.

Court papers filed by ICE accuse Fischer of using subcontractors "to provide a layer" between it and some 75 illegal workers. That layer, the feds contend, "does not relieve Fischer of the responsibility to ensure that their contractors are employing a legal work force."

A crackdown on undocumented workers would shrivel an already tight construction labor market. Lee Wetherington of Lee Wetherington Homes in Sarasota, Fla., estimates that 70 percent of the workers employed by his subcontractors are Hispanic immigrants.

"If for any reason we lose that work force, you're going to see the time required to build a house double or triple and the cost of new homes increase 30 to 40 percent," Wetherington says.

If developers find they can't pass along those costs, they may pull back on construction - and fewer new homes could ultimately boost prices of existing homes.

Wetherington insists that there just aren't enough native-born workers available to meet demand and points to Sarasota County's 2.3 percent unemployment rate. His company built 300 homes last year. Without immigrant workers, "we'd have been lucky to build 75," he says.

Wetherington does not know how many of those workers are undocumented, but he suspects it's the majority. He recalls an incident last year when the arrival of workers' comp officials spooked laborers into thinking an immigration raid was underway.

"Everyone scattered," he says. "The entire site just cleared out."

Source: CNNMoney.com

When Mr. Diaz Cooks

He's Finding More Hispanic Products at The Local Supermarket

May 31, 2006
By Walter Nicholls

When Eddie Diaz cooks a Puerto Rican-style dinner for friends, he heads straight to Giant Food, where everything he needs -- plantains, yuca, passion fruit pulp -- can be found to make his grandmother's recipes.

"That surprised me when I moved here," says Diaz, 24, who grew up in central Puerto Rico and New Jersey before moving to Bethesda to attend American University. "I didn't expect an average supermarket to have so many Spanish products. And they get more and more every time I look."

At the Giant on Westbard Avenue, Diaz can choose fresh plantains in the produce department or, if he is pressed for time, frozen tostones, which are fried green bananas. The store has his favorite bean (pinto) and size (medium) both dried and canned. And hard-to-peel yuca comes fresh or peeled and frozen.

Like Diaz, many Washingtonians who favor foods from back home are finding that more and more supermarkets are stocking shelves with products they want and brands they recognize. Supermarket owners see the buying power of Hispanics -- the fastest-growing segment of the American population and the largest ethnic minority, with 576,000 members in the Washington area, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures.

"We now have a customer base that is much more diverse, and a lot of our Hispanic customers are looking for specific items," says Giant Food spokesman Jamie Miller. One of Giant's newest stores, located on Park Road in Columbia Heights, has the chain's largest selection of products from Mexico and Central and South America. Giant considers the store a prototype.

Hispanics typically spend significantly more on groceries per week than the general U.S. population, $133 versus $91, according to a 2005 survey by the Washington-based Food Marketing Institute. They found that Hispanics, who tend to shop as a family, want stores that cater to their tastes, display bilingual signage and have Spanish-speaking employees.

In December, Shoppers Food Warehouse Corp. opened El Primero Mercado, a sprawling supermarket on Route 28 in Manassas with 10,000 products from Mexico and Central America as well as concepts, such as a fresh tortilla bakery, not found at a typical Shoppers Food & Pharmacy store. A decade ago, the average supermarket in the Washington area was limited to a small selection of Goya products.

Family-owned and in its 70th year, Goya, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States, began selling to supermarkets in the 1950s. The first to carry the brand was a Safeway store in Harlem. "It was difficult. At the time, Goya products were displayed on a small section on top of a cooler," says Conrad Colon, vice president of marketing. "As the Hispanic community grew, so did demand and eventually Goya got its own shelves."

Today, with 1,500 products, Secaucus, N.J.- based Goya can dominate an entire aisle. But not every product goes to every store. Goya, for instance, makes 36 varieties of dried beans in four sizes. The Goya sales staff studies the demographics of each neighborhood before stocking the shelves with a mix of products targeted to a specific regional immigrant community.

To serve the diverse Hispanic community in the Washington area, the company has built a distribution center in Prince George County near Petersburg, Va., which will open in August. For the sizable population from El Salvador, for example, stores sell more pureed red or black beans. A line of frozen, Salvadoran-style pupusas -- corncakes stuffed with meat or cheese or both -- introduced last fall, is doing well.

Shoppers of Andean ancestry will find a new collection of chili pepper pastes, such as aji amarillo , in the weeks ahead. Mexican Americans will discover more jalapeño and chipotle chili-flavored products and tamarind-based drinks.

Eddie Diaz's cupboard is full of Goya cans, bags and boxes stacked one atop another. Once a week he makes a big pot of rice and beans flavored with sazon , a seasoning mix made with monosodium glutamate, salt, dried peppers and spices. This time of year, he spends a lot of time outdoors grilling marinated chicken and pork seasoned with more sazon.

Alongside, he serves fried green bananas with a choice of toppings and always starchy yuca covered with a pungent garlic and onion sauce. Passion fruit pulp is mixed with water and sugar for a tangy island drink.

Someday, Diaz plans to open the first high-end Puerto Rican restaurant in downtown Washington. He will use the recipes his family has passed down for generations at its farmsteads near Barranquitas in the central part of the island. "They need one here," Diaz says of his restaurant concept. "These are flavors most people don't know."

Source: The Washington Post

Minorities pay more for mortgages

Trade group challenges study's findings; credit quality at issue

May 31, 2006
By Amy Hoak

African-Americans and Latinos enter into high-priced, subprime mortgages more often than white borrowers with identical credit qualifications, according to a study by the Center for Responsible Lending.

The report, released Wednesday, examined 50,000 subprime loans using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and supplemented with the Loan Performance Subprime Asset-Backed Securities Database. The two sources were used to isolate borrowers' race and ethnicity from all other risk factors, the report's author said.

"For many types of loans, borrowers of color in our database were more than 30% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers, even after accounting for differences in risk," according to the report.
Subprime loans can carry interest rates several percentage points above the going rate for mortgages made to the most-creditworthy borrowers; a prime 30-year mortgage today might carry an interest rate of 6.5% while a subprime loan could run 10% or more. Plus, subprime loans also come with higher fees and more-restrictive terms.

"African-American and Latino families are paying a premium for home loans because of the color of their skin and no other reason," said Hilary Shelton, director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's Washington bureau, speaking during a conference call organized by the center. The Center for Responsible Lending is an advocacy group aimed at protecting homeownership and family wealth.

The Mortgage Bankers Association disagrees with the findings, and believes methodological errors were made in the study, said Laura Armstrong, its vice president of public affairs. The organization is conducting its own review of the report.

"The CRL has asserted they controlled in their analysis the relevant risk characteristics that impact mortgage pricing. The reality is, in this study they failed to do so," Armstrong said. "The data is questionable and is going to require further review."

Another look at the data
When 2004 HMDA data was first released, it showed blacks and Hispanics were more likely to end up in the high-cost subprime market than whites. But the government said the statistics couldn't be taken as "evidence of bias in lending decisions," Armstrong said.

Lenders argued minority borrowers tend to be less affluent, have weaker credit histories and make smaller down payments, said Debbie Bocian, senior researcher for the Center for Responsible Lending.

"We weren't convinced. Our organization was created to fight predatory lending, and we wanted to make sure that borrowers of all races and ethnicities had fair access to home financing," Bocian said in a statement.

"So, we supplemented the 2004 HMDA data with information from a proprietary loan-level database that contains critical information on the risk profiles of its loans," she said. "We looked at a large national sample of loans -- about 50,000 subprime mortgages in all."

According to the study, African-American borrowers were more likely to receive higher-rate home purchase and refinance loans than white borrowers with similar qualifications. Those with prepayment penalties on their subprime home loans were 6% to 34% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than white borrowers.

Latino borrowers purchasing homes were 29% to 142% more likely to receive a higher-rate loan than non-Latino, white borrowers with similar qualifications, the study concluded.

Bocian and others say the findings disprove the lending industry's explanation for why minorities get more high-cost subprime mortgages, and they assert less-sophisticated borrowers are being steered to less-favorable loans.

The Center for Responsible Lending is urging a U.S. House subcommittee considering a bill on subprime lending to strengthen the language of the legislation for the increased protection of borrowers. The center specifically wants controls on yield spread premiums, which are a measure of loan pricing, and wants the government to demand that mortgage brokers act in the best interests of their customers.

Source: MarketWatch.com

Hispanic immigration is a blessing to local Catholic church attendance

May 31, 2006
By Stephen Elliott

They hold hands -- father, mother, son and daughter -- and say the Lord's Prayer.

It's a weekly ritual for Efrain and Monica Lopez and their children Juan, 12, and Erica, 8, who attend Mass in St. Mary's Catholic Church in Moline.

During this late-afternoon, weekday mass there are only 10 people in the church. But on Sundays there's often a standing-room-only crowd, mostly Hispanic churchgoers.

The Rev. Jerry Pilon celebrates Masses in both Spanish and English on Sundays. St. Mary's is one of three churches in the Quad-Cities offering both Spanish and English Masses -- the others, ironically, are St. Mary's Catholic Church in East Moline and St. Mary's Catholic Church in Davenport.

"Most of the Hispanics that come here are Catholic," Rev. Pilon said. "That automatically brings members into the church that way.

"That's the way the Catholic Church expanded (in the United States) in the beginning, because a lot of the immigrants coming from Ireland, Eastern Europe and so on and were Catholics. The church expanded through immigration in the 1800s," he said. "Now, it's a similar type of experience. You have another wave of immigration. They happen to be largely Catholic."

In the last decade, the area's Hispanic populations have increased, in turn boosting congregations in area parishes.

"When I was growing up in Guanajuato, 100 percent of the people there were Catholic," Mr. Lopez said. "I think being close to the church makes it better to raise our kids."

The Peoria Diocese, which oversees all of the Illinois Quad-Cities' Catholic churches, has about 240,000 parishioners in 26 counties. Bishop Daniel Jenky estimates there are 80,000 Hispanic Catholics spread throughout the diocese.

Rev. Pilon said estimates show Hispanics will make up 40 percent of the diocese by 2050.

He said there is a connection of faith for many Hispanics.

"In other words, if you immigrate, you give up your home, your cultural surroundings," he explained. "You're leaving behind what you knew. Once here in America, the one constant is their faith. At least, it's one constant they build upon."

Rev. Pilon has been at St. Mary's for eight years. He estimates at least two-thirds of his congregation are Hispanic.

"There have been increasing numbers of young Hispanics," Rev. Pilon said. "There are a lot, say, in the 15- to 30-year-old range. They're usually on the younger side that come in as immigrants.

"Also, I probably have at least 200 kids under 8 years old at the church on Sunday that are children of Hispanics," he said. "What I've noticed are a lot of very young (parishioners) are getting married and having children. They are pretty much the ones that come in."

Bishop Jenky said the Quad-Cities has had a long tradition of Hispanics in the Catholic church.

"Our oldest Hispanic parish in this diocese is Our Lady of Guadalupe in Silvis, which was founded in the 1920s and was originally housed in a railroad car," he said. "Their Catholic tradition is a valuable component of our shared faith.

"In recent years, the diocese has significantly expanded our services to Spanish-speaking Catholics in hopes to do even more in the coming year."

At St. Mary's in East Moline, the Rev. James King said a Spanish-language Mass on Sunday makes for a full church.

"It seems to be a growing population, and so, the church is growing in terms of the immigrant population in our area," Rev. King said. "That's good for the church and the people who are coming here."

At St. Mary's in Davenport, the Rev. Robert Striegel said he would like to offer another Spanish-language Mass in addition to the 11 a.m. Sunday service. The problem, he said, is having enough personnel within the diocese.

Source: Quad-Cities Online

Not Your Papi's Network

Sí TV is small, but its target audience -- young, bilingual Hispanics -- is huge

June 5, 2005 Edition of BusinessWeek
By Brian Grow

In deadpan voices, a half-dozen Latinos make their pitch in a black-and-white television ad. The camera flicks to their somber faces. One by one, they implore Americans to help smuggle illegal immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. The more who come, the more gardeners, construction workers, pool cleaners, and busboys will be available to do the hard work while "white Americans" relax. Summing up their cause, a male Latino reminds viewers that just one more illegal immigrant can make a big difference in how much time they have to kick back. Then he invites them to find out more by visiting the group's Web site: www.sneakoneacross.com.

Of course, it's all in jest, an irreverent sketch in the service of Unacceptable Behavior, a Saturday Night Live-esque comedy show populated almost exclusively by Latino actors that airs Friday nights at 11 on upstart cable channel Sí TV. With its lineup of original Latino-themed programs, Sí TV, launched in February, 2004, is an anomaly in the hot Hispanic media business. Unlike traditional conglomerates that air campy tele-novelas and variety shows in Spanish, Sí TV is hunting for young Hispanics who are comfortable watching TV in English -- but are clamoring for hip programs that speak to their Latino roots. "The market is heading that way," says Mauro Panzera, senior director of multicultural marketing at cable company Comcast Corp. (CMCSA ).

Indeed, Sí TV is hoping to ride a seismic shift in the U.S. Hispanic population. Data released in early May by the U.S. Census Bureau show the number of U.S.-born Hispanics topped new immigrants by 75%, or more than 400,000 people, between July, 2004, and the same month in 2005. By 2020 second- and third-generation immigrants are expected to account for 66% of the estimated 60 million U.S. Hispanics. "We're not talking about a niche," says Sí TV CEO Michael Schwimmer, a former programming chief at satellite company EchoStar Communications (DISH ). "We're talking about mainstream America."

LANGUAGE LESSONS
But for Sí TV, becoming mainstream won't be automatic. Between cable and Echostar's DISH Network, the Los Angeles-based channel reaches just 12.5 million households and is expected to generate $6.8 million in advertising revenue this year, according to Kagan Research LLC. By contrast, a fully distributed channel can count on about 90 million homes. Sí TV is dwarfed by established Spanish-language rivals such as NBC Universal's Telemundo (GE ) and broadcaster Univision Communications Inc. (UVN ), which will pull in $831 million in ads this year. During the week of Apr. 17, the top 13 programs watched by Hispanic households were Univision's. (The broadcaster pulled the plug on its own bilingual network, Galavision, in 2002.)

Whether to target the nation's Hispanics in Spanish or English has bedeviled marketers for years. But U.S. Census Bureau data show that 75% of Hispanics describe themselves as bilingual or English-dominant. And analysts say young Hispanics are more likely to acculturate -- maintain their Latino roots, even as they speak English -- rather than completely assimilate. The upshot: "Marketing to Hispanics is increasingly going to be in-culture instead of in-language," says Felipe Korzenny, a professor of Hispanic marketing at Florida State University. That's what Jeff Valdez, a former stand-up comic, realized in 1998 when he conceived of the idea for Sí TV. Now, in a riff on the famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire, a tag line on the network's own ads reads: "You lost me at Hola!"

Corporate marketers are slowly waking up to the new Hispanic demographics. Sure, sticking exclusively with English programming could mean viewers -- and advertisers -- defect to big networks like ABC and CBS. But Sí TV is winning converts. Next year, Kagan Research expects the channel's total ad dollars to surpass those of rival Mun2, the bilingual cable channel owned by Telemundo. Revenues remain small, but Sí TV's lineup of 68 advertisers, up from 26 in 2004, includes big-name brands such as Burger King, Toyota Motor (TM ), and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT ). The reason? Companies realize they can no longer afford to plow all their ad spending into Spanish-language pitches targeting recent arrivals. Last year consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) shifted some ads from nonassimilated Spanish-speaking Latinos to a niche it calls "living in the hyphen" -- bilingual, bicultural Latinos who grew up in the U.S. but were reared in Hispanic households. P&G ran ads for Cover Girl and Pantene shampoo on Sí TV last year to tap that market.

The rumblings of change irk executives at Univision. Put up for sale in February by CEO Jerrold Perenchio, the network -- which frequently beats the big four networks in prime time -- could fetch as rich a price as $13 billion. Mexican broadcaster Televisa is teaming with private equity to pursue a bid. Univision's success was built on catering to Spanish-speaking newcomers who clamor for a taste of home. But many young Latinos find its all-Spanish programs passé. "They risk losing an entire generation," warns Jon Mandel, co-chairman of media buyer MedicaCom. Still, Univision is adamant that it won't add English to the lineup. "It's not what we do; it's not what we know," says Thomas F. McGarrity, co-president of network sales at Univision.

That reluctance to change gives Sí TV a big opening. On its show The Rub, young Latinos banter in English about the ups and downs of relationships -- and often address a Latino taboo: confessing to Mami and Papi about premarital sex. Try finding a program like that on Univision.

Source: BusinessWeek

Does It Take a Latino to Market to One?

Experts debate the best way to build Hispanic marketing talent.

May 31, 2006
By Samar Farah

The debate over whether to reach out to U.S. Hispanics is just about over. Most savvy marketers know that the Hispanic market is bigger, younger and increasing its buying power faster than any other minority group in the United States. What’s just beginning, however, is the discussion over why marketers are doing such a poor job of targeting this group.

Consider these numbers: More than 100 of the top 250 television and print advertisers spend less than 1 percent of their budget targeting the Hispanic market. Some industries, such as pharmaceuticals and fragrances, continue to ignore the Hispanic consumer completely with their messaging. And when it comes to selling their brand to U.S. Latinos, only 20 percent of companies are "getting it right," according to Si Change Consulting.

Although CMOs may be more eager than ever to reach out to Hispanics, many are discouraged by the results of their efforts and unsure how to proceed. Many have taken the quick route to the Hispanic community, hiring a couple of Latino marketers or a Hispanic agency. Unfortunately, the resulting output frequently is all tactic and no strategy.

When companies want to market to a multicultural audience, "then they’re suddenly in a rush to hire people with the right surname," says Wanla Cheng, president of Asia Link Consulting Group. Practitioners and consultants agree that someone immersed in the Hispanic culture—either as an immigrant or a second- or third-generation American—can be a font of insight. Nevertheless, most consultants don’t believe that it takes a Latino to market to one.

Rudy Rodriguez, director of multicultural marketing for General Mills, has a staff of five specializing in the Hispanic segment. Asked about his criteria for hiring, he says that passion for the segment and leadership far outweigh cultural background and even language skills. "There are some people on my staff who are becoming great experts in Hispanic marketing, and they are not Hispanic and don’t speak Spanish," he says.

Ricardo Alvarez, vice president of the U.S. Marketing to Hispanics and Latin American practices at Zyman Group, agrees. "It’s critical that Hispanic marketing efforts are staffed with Hispanic market experts," he says. "Whether or not they are Hispanic is not as important as whether they understand the segment and the marketplace."

Other experts agree that when surname or cultural background becomes the main factor behind staffing efforts, companies run the risk of recruiting employees that know a lot about Latino tastes and traditions and only a little about the nuts and bolts of marketing. These hires in turn have trouble winning the trust and confidence of their more capable peers. Or, just as often, a company will hire a talented marketer of Hispanic descent but fail to support the effort—and the talent—financially.

Either way, Hispanic marketers can quickly become marginalized, leaving the CMO with an under-staffed, under-funded effort that hurts the entire marketing team. "Hispanic employees get frustrated because they start to get the sense that they were just hired as window dressing to check off the diversity box, and they’re not really being given the opportunity to market, and it causes all sorts of tension," says Rochelle Newman-Carrasco, president of Enlace Communications, an ad agency specializing in the Latino market.

Unfortunately, critics of such corporate practices also bemoan the small pool of marketers with Hispanic expertise. "I’m trying to scour the 50 states for talent," says Alvarez. "We’ve talked to 40 to 60 of the best of the best and it is scary the level of talent that is out there."

Some companies are filling the gap by bringing in Latino talent from outside the United States, which can be a risky approach, says Chiqui Cartagena, author of "Latino Boom." CMOs should not assume that a marketer who has worked in another Spanish-language region is prepared to capture the essence of the U.S. Hispanic community. "Having experience in Latin American markets is not necessarily good enough," says Cartagena, who also launched the Spanish version of TV Guide.

Together or Separate?
At most companies, Hispanic marketing efforts live under a separate banner, such as "multicultural marketing" or "Hispanic marketing." These are typically centralized groups that collaborate across brands or business units.

That’s pretty much the picture at companies such as General Mills, where Rodriguez oversees a group of five Hispanic marketers. Some observers argue for a more decentralized tack in which every member of the marketing team, regardless of responsibility and function, should have a stake in reaching this important segment. Others, however, think such an approach could actually hurt Hispanic marketing efforts.

"In an ideal world, Hispanic marketing would be fully integrated into marketing," says Newman. "[But] we don’t live in an ideal world, and when you say it should just be part of marketing, it doesn’t get proper attention or budgeting. It helps to have a champion for it and a dedicated voice."

Manny Gonzalez doesn’t think it’s an either-or situation. The former senior manager of multicultural marketing for Diageo (he recently joined Zyman Group as a managing consultant) helped grow brands including Johnnie Walker and Hennesey Cognac among U.S. Hispanics before being transferred to work full time on the Johnny Walker brand. Gonzalez believes a centralized team makes sense for a company that is still in the early stages of expanding its brand into the Hispanic market.

"If you’re trying to market to the Hispanic consumer and you have no history with that consumer, then it makes sense to establish a centralized group whose entire focus is that consumer," he explains. "You don’t want to affect the ongoing business of the brand team, because they have a [larger] mission to accomplish."

The problem is when this setup becomes permanent. "A centralized ethnic marketing department shouldn’t be seen as something that lives forever," he says. As brand recognition increases among Hispanic consumers, the Hispanic marketing efforts should be folded into the larger marketing team, he advises.

At General Mills, Rodriguez’s centralized team handles corporate projects while different divisions, functions and brands have their own Hispanic specialists who report back to Rodriguez on a dotted line. Those Hispanic representatives scattered throughout the organization also cycle through rotations in the multicultural marketing department—a corporate twist on the idea of cultural exchanges. "We expose brand marketers to Hispanic customs, cultures and traditions," he says. "And while they are with us, their management skills are a huge asset."

The Agency Debate
Not every company has the resources to hire Hispanic marketing specialists. "Our internal department is very small – myself and an assistant," says Barbara Ponce, director of Hispanic, Asian and African American marketing for Honda. With that kind of support, it’s little surprise that Ponce would refer to her Hispanic agency of record—La Agencia de Orci—as an extension of her Hispanic marketing department.

"They know the market better than anyone," she says. "They live and breathe Hispanic, they move throughout the culture."

Alex Lopez Negrete is the president and founder of Lopez Negrete Communications, which—like de Orci—is one of the top 10 Hispanic agencies in the United States. He describes the evolving role of the Hispanic agency like this: "We’ve become ad hoc segment managers, tour guides and teachers on how to do business in that segment. Advertising is just one component. Most Hispanic agencies are fully integrated shops with promotions, public relations, communication channel management."

Some consultants flinch at this level of corporate reliance on Hispanic agencies. They argue that Hispanic marketers look too often to agencies, in effect handing over their message to creative directors and giving them full reign, in part because Hispanic marketing efforts are understaffed and in part because companies are insecure about their own insights into the Hispanic culture.

"There is this shroud of mystery surrounding Hispanic marketing," says Alvarez. "There’s this ‘Just trust us on this, we’re Hispanic’ mentality." He and others warn companies that ethnic agencies are often not up to par when it comes to measuring the marketplace and ROI. Negrete counters that his firm has a bigger research department than any other agency its size "because of the resources our clients need us to bring them." Is there room for more rigor in that research? "Absolutely," he says.

Peeling Back the Layers
As some companies grow their sophistication in targeting Hispanics, they are developing a better understanding of the complexity and diversity of the Latino community. Agencies and consultants distinguish between New York and West Coast Hispanics, between Northeast Cubans and Floridian Cubans. To manage such nuances, companies often end up grouping Hispanics according to language preference.

Joe Paz, head of multicultural marketing for Verizon, admits that his company’s measurement systems have improved over the many years that Verizon has been targeting Hispanics. As recently as three years ago, the company assumed that customers with Latino surnames preferred communicating in Spanish. Verizon now keeps a record of customers’ language preference based on their calls to the multilingual help center. "We’ve gotten better with our data and keeping track of who is English-dominant vs. Spanish-dominant," says Paz. "That’s a big evolution for us."

Some observers say companies should spend less time worrying about consumers’ language preference and more time distinguishing between different levels of acculturation—an oversight that they believe leads brands to ignore a giant portion of U.S. Hispanics. The theory of acculturation, which has firmly replaced the notion of assimilation, maintains that Hispanic immigrants integrate into American culture while still embracing many aspects of their original culture, including the Spanish language. When marketing to Hispanics, it makes more sense, according to this theory, to distinguish between generations of Hispanics than between language preference.

Gonzalez and others say that Spanish-language media giants such as television network Univision and research centers like Nielson’s steer marketers toward Spanish-language-dominant Hispanics—in other words, the portion of U.S. Hispanics who are recent immigrants or fall into low-income brackets. Honda, for example, does all of its Hispanic advertising in Spanish, whether for print, radio, Internet, brochures or TV.

Spanish-language media companies are naturally less interested in playing up U.S. Hispanics who are bilingual or even English-dominant. But according to consultants, younger, U.S.-born Hispanics who are bilingual or primarily speak English make up 60 percent of the U.S. Hispanic market and thus represent the biggest marketing opportunity.

Robert Rose left Univision to start his own Latino media company, AIM Tell-A-Vision, which is producing English-language programs targeting that younger, more acculturated Hispanic segment. "Univision and others have sold the industry on the myth that to reach Hispanics you need Spanish-language television," says Rose, AIM’s CEO. "Language, in my mind, has contributed to the stunted growth of the Hispanic market."

Dilys Tosteson Garcia, president of de Orci, believes the debate over language misses the point. "U.S. Hispanics move in and out of Spanish, and you’re really talking about a bilingual consumer," she says. "At the end of the day, [the goal is to determine] What is their media behavior? Where can I reach them cost effectively? A lot of the time that takes you back to Spanish-language TV and print, because it continues to be more cost-effective."

For companies such as General Mills, efforts to get better at Hispanic marketing extend beyond the consumer into the entire organization. Rodriquez, in addition to overseeing the multicultural marketing team, leads a corporate multicultural center of excellence that functions as a kind of internal consultancy, gathering best practices, data and strategy recommendations for all minority segments, including Hispanic. General Mills also runs a Hispanic support network for all its Latino employees, which includes a panel of Latino employees who evaluate ideas on behalf of the brand teams, providing initial feedback on new Latino products and marketing ideas.

These initiatives make Hispanic marketing much more strategic than tactical at General Mills, says Rodriguez. "It appears in our annual strategic plan that we draft with the chairman and the CEO," he says. "So there’s a very visible, high-level commitment."

Source: CMO Magazine

Marketing: 'Speak English. Live Latin.'

Once, those vying for Latino bucks and ballots bombed with bad translations. Today, savvy appeals help close the deal.

May 30, 2006
By Jennifer Ordonez

Politicians in search of Latino votes, listen up: put away those Spanish-English dictionaries.

It wasn't long ago that Republicans and Democrats alike would brush up on their high-school Spanish before stumping in Latino neighborhoods. These days, however, politicos looking to connect with the growing pool of Hispanic voters might do well to take a cue from Hollywood and corporate America. As Latino spending power steadily rises, grocery stores, movie studios and clothing companies are paying close attention to the $636 billion-plus market. What they're discovering is that Hispanic-Americans, particularly young spenders between the ages of 14 and 34, want to be spoken to in English, even as they stay true to their Latino identity. "They're doing it their way," says Christy Haubegger, a Los Angeles agent who specializes in Latino and ethnic markets. By combining what she calls "Hispanic values" (a strong emphasis on family and religion, for example) with "traditional American aspirations" (i.e., buying a new car and going to college), she says, these young consumers are "creating this new identity that says 'I can have the best of both worlds'."

Consider Si TV, a 24-hour cable channel targeted to young Latinos, which launched in February 2004 and is now in 10 million households. Its motto: "Speak English. Live Latin." Si TV viewers "aren't calling their homeland in Mexico. They're calling their homeboys up the street," says Jeff Valdez, co-founder and chairman of the Los Angeles-based network. Those homeys, meanwhile, are stopping by to eat mami'scooking while tuning in to Si TV shows like "Urban Jungle," a reality series in which nine "really suburban" (read: mostly Anglo) kids share a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in a poor Latino neighborhood in L.A. The once pampered participants must perform jobs often filled by immigrants, like cleaning houses in Beverly Hills or selling oranges on a freeway exit. "They get in there and live life as an immigrant and find that it's not always a party," Valdez says. "Latinos want to see their lives on TV. It's the simple concept of validation of self."

No longer are companies simply translating ad copy into Spanish to appeal to Latinos. Sometimes things got lost in translation. According to the Lansing State Journal, Coors's "Turn it loose" campaign translated into "Sueltalo," or "Let it loose," as in diarrhea, before the company quickly changed the slogan to "Won't slow you down." Now some retailers are tailoring their inventories to the audience. Kmart launched a line of household goods inspired by Mexican singer Thalia. Pulaski Furniture Corp. introduced Casa Cristina, a furniture line with "bold carvings" from Spanish-language TV personality Cristina Saralegui. And Sears this fall will unveil Latina Life, a "Hispanic inspired" women's apparel line. So what might inspire a Latina to open her wallet? Sears is betting on tropical colors, faux-fur prints, lots of spangles and sizes befitting "curve conscious" chicas with an "active lifestyle and a unique sense of self."

Sears and the others may want to proceed with caution, some retail analysts say. A recent study found that Latino shoppers "don't want to be segregated," says Candace Corlett, of market-research firm WSL Strategic Retail. "They choose the same stores for the same reasons and go with the same frequency" as non-Hispanics. Clothing retailer Men's Wearhouse learned that the hard way. In 2003, the company launched its Eddie Rodriguez stores, a "lifestyle" and clothing chain targeting Latino men. By the end of this year, all six stores will be closed. Consumers said "no" to the concept. And that's the same in Spanish and English.

Source: Newsweek-MSNBC

Some other interesting Articles on the May 30th edition of Newsweek:
- A Latin Power Surge
- The Survivor's Story
- Why We're the New Irish

Hispanics: Business ownership key to American dream

Untapped employee market for companies in rising Hispanic demographic

May 30, 2006
By Jerry Davich

It can't be denied -- Hispanics and hard work go together like American business and cheap labor.

This partly explains why the rate of Hispanics who start their own businesses far outpaces the national average by a 3-1 ratio.

Many Hispanics see being their own boss as the only way to true prosperity here.

In 2002, there were 1.6 million Hispanic-owned establishments, a 31 percent jump from 1997. Today there are an estimated 2 million establishments with more opening each month.

Of those Hispanic-owned businesses, nearly half are owned by people of Mexican descent, and the majority are mom-and-pop operators, like Noel Berrum, owner of El Super Taco restaurant in Hobart.

Like most local Hispanic business owners born in Mexico, he came to the Chicago region to work for someone else before running his own place.

While learning the language, culture and business ropes, he earned a living here, regularly sending money back to his wife, Maria, and his family.

An estimated $20 billion is sent back to Mexico each year by both legal and illegal immigrants here, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

Still, Hispanics boast an estimated purchasing power of $600 billion annually in this country, according to recent U.S. Census data.

Regarding illegal immigrants alone, it's estimated they cost this country $20 billion each year in education, public aid, health care and other services, yet contribute $7 billion in Social Security taxes they will never claim.

The Latino population is not only the fastest growing group in the Chicago metro region, but also the major driver behind jobs and housing, according to the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies.

This is an echo trend from a century ago when local steel mills heavily recruited workers from Mexico, who then settled in Northwest Indiana, particularly north Lake County.

Today, instead of mill jobs many are turning to service industry work at local casino boats, or in construction jobs, where it's estimated that one in eight laborers are undocumented Hispanics, like Martin Berrum, whose father owns El Super Taco restaurant in Hobart.

Larry Sharp, director of the International Institute of Northwest Indiana, a nonprofit agency that assists local immigrants, said most uneducated Hispanics who arrive here have the ability to quickly learn work skills needed to stay employed.

Sharp said if you pit Hispanic youth against American youth strictly in work ethic, willingness to learn and similar soft skills, it's no contest -- Hispanic youth come out on top.

"America doesn't teach its kids those skills," he said.

At WorkOne in Hammond, a group of bilingual specialists is working to introduce basic Spanish to English-speaking employers and basic English to Spanish-speaking employees.

The idea is to bridge the language gap between Hispanic workers and local employers, while teaching these workers English as a second language.

"If you were a multimillion dollar corporation looking for new staffing avenues, wouldn't you utilize this rising demographic of workers?" asked Lorraine Guillen-Wentz, a bilingual specialist.

"Sure, but many local corporations don't know how because of language issues."

Maria Guillen, another bilingual specialist, said local big business doesn't see dollar signs within the Hispanic labor market and it should.

"Why must Hispanics always be cooks not managers, laborers not foremen, and in housekeeping not administration?" she asked. "Language, nothing more."

Source: Northwest Indiana Times

[EXTRAS]
Hispanic and business fast facts
$600 billion -- Hispanic purchasing power in U.S.
$900 billion -- Projected Hispanic purchasing power in 2007
$800 million -- Sent back to Mexico each year from Chicago region
4 percent -- Percentage of Hispanic business owners in 2002 with paid employees
38,500 -- Hispanic physicians and surgeons
38,100 -- Hispanic lawyers
50,400 -- Hispanic postsecondary teachers
18 percent -- Percentage of Hispanics who work in managerial, professional and related occupations.

Source: U.S. Census

Hispanics and industry

The construction industry is the largest employer of short-term illegal workers with some 550,000 unauthorized migrants arriving between 2000 and 2005.
Overall, more than 1.4 million unauthorized workers are employed in the construction industry, accounting for about 12 percent of its work force, the largest share of unauthorized workers in any major industry category.
Short-term unauthorized workers account for less than 5 percent of the construction industry work force.
The leisure and hospitality industry is the second largest employer of short-term unauthorized workers, with some 500,000 unauthorized migrants arriving between 2000 and 2005.
Altogether, more than 1.2 million unauthorized migrants are employed in the leisure and hospitality industry, making up 10 percent of the work force in that industry.
Construction and the leisure and hospitality industries combined account for the employment of about 40 percent of all short-term unauthorized workers.

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

Together in Bicultural Business

Networking is big among young Latino entrepreneurs, whose similarities can help them seal a deal

May 30, 2006
By Krissah Williams

Fredy A. Diaz thumbed through the upscale Spanish-English magazine Two Mundos, flipping past pages of Peruvian models, a story in English about geometric chandeliers and one in Spanish about reggaeton music.

"We don't target the immigrant that just immigrated. It takes us a little bit to get set," said Marcelo Rocabado, Two Mundos's 28-year-old co-publisher who was born in Bolivia. "We target people like you and me."

Diaz -- born in El Salvador 35 years ago and now owner of Telecel Marketing Solutions Inc. of Gaithersburg -- nodded. His DirecTV affiliate, which sells satellite television's Spanish-language offerings to immigrants, has 110 employees, seven offices down the East Coast and more than 23,000 customers.

On this day, he was considering whether to buy an advertisement in Two Mundos. "We all came to this country with nothing," Diaz told Rocabado. "I think this [magazine] inspires people to go to the next level."

Rocabado quickly flipped the conversation to a mix of Spanish and English, as he offered Diaz a discount to close the sale. " Si compra mas que un mes tenemos discounts," Rocabado said. "We can do something special."

Rocabado and Diaz are part of a small but growing group of young, professional Latino entrepreneurs here. About 13 percent of the more than 32,000 Hispanic-owned businesses in the Washington region are in professional areas such as technology, law, accounting, engineering and translation services. Some of the Latinos who run those companies say they operate in a bicultural society that extends from this region to Latin America, a world defined more by language, ethnicity and international connections than by geographic boundaries.

These demographic changes and bilingual networking were on display one Friday night, as Rocabado met with the Two Mundos staff at Cafe Citron on Connecticut Avenue NW in the District. A deejay mixed a Persian techno beat behind Latina rocker Shakira's latest hit, driving the club's international crowd to the tiny dance floor.

Club owner Jackie Rocha greeted Jeanette Dove, Two Mundos' other publisher, with a light kiss on the cheek. Rocha immigrated to the District from Bolivia on a visa with her parents 30 years ago and in 2000 opened the popular cafe with her mother.

Dove's family moved to Miami from Puerto Rico in 1979 so her father could study to become a commercial airplane pilot. She spent most of her childhood in Aurora, Colo., where she attended a predominantly white school. She spoke a mix of Spanish and English at home and only English at school. There, she told her teachers more than once that she does not celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the holiday commemorating the Mexican army's victory over France at the Battle of Puebla. "They thought we are all Mexican." She moved to Washington in 1999 to attend American University's business school.

As Dove chatted with Rocha, Rocabado danced behind her. He was raised by an aunt in a middle-class neighborhood in La Paz, Bolivia. He left home at 16 to follow his mother to the District, where she worked as a teacher. When he arrived on a green card sponsored by his mother, Rocabado spoke no English but learned quickly and enrolled at the University of the District of Columbia. He directs the magazine's photo shoots, designs its pages and sells advertising along with Dove, who is also his girlfriend.

That night, the magazine staff was at Cafe Citron taking a break from production of the fifth issue of Two Mundos, a three-year-old magazine that publishes 40,000 copies. Dove said that club owner Rocha had studied fashion in Milan and that she helped choose the photo for the cover of the magazine's fashion issue.

Dove, 25, said she and her friends often feel invisible despite the growing number of Latinos like them in the Washington area. There are no day-labor sites, Minutemen or harrowing border crossings in Dove's world. As immigration has pushed to the front pages, stereotypes about the Latino community have surfaced that Dove said do not reflect her reality.

"In this area, people think that the Latino isn't important, that we are only the employees, but that's not true," she said. "If you go in right now, and you say Latino to the person, they are going to think of the immigrant issue."

Real life is much more complex, Dove said. She flips the radio in her van between Spanish-language pop music and hip-hop. Her favorite movie is "The Secret of My Success," in which Michael J. Fox stars as a young corporate tycoon, but she's also a fan of the drama and passion of Spanish-language telenovelas .

And Dove also does business at the intersection of both worlds.

She and Rocabado did not attend the immigrants rights marches last month because they were in Miami holding a party to launch Two Mundos in that market.

Diaz attended the large march for immigrants rights on the Mall and said he closed his office because his employees wanted to attend it. But in his white dress shirt, olive-green slacks, brown dress shoes and the ever-present BlackBerry on his hip, he stood out among the masses. He carried no flag and did not yell with the passionate crowd.

Diaz left El Salvador in 1987 on a student visa, found work at Cameron's Seafood in Rockville and studied English at Montgomery College. After two years of English studies, he was hired as a sales representative at Snyder Communications Inc. and became director of sales until Daniel M. Snyder sold the company in 2000 to focus on the Washington Redskins.

Diaz met Rocabado at a mixer thrown by the local affiliate of Spanish-language television station Univision last year. "We're like a little monopoly," Rocabado said. "We'd rather do business with a Latino. That's what I love about my community."

Cultural similarities ease business deals, said Rocabado, Dove and others. For instance, when Dove heard that a group of young immigrants had opened an upscale furniture store called Vesta Home in Arlington, she contacted one of the co-owners, Georgie Benardete. The women learned of their mutual ties to Puerto Rico -- both of their mothers were born there -- and talked about how they might work together.

After the meeting, Benardete began advertising in Two Mundos. The store builds custom furniture and carries Armani/Casa, the Italian designer's home-furniture collection.

"It's very cool," Benardete said of her business connections to other Latin American immigrants. "I work with a graphic designer. A young guy from Argentina who left Buenos Aires because of the crisis [and] started a business here and then expanded to Buenos Aires. There is a comfort level. Your Latin culture can come out. You can go and kiss them on the cheek because they understand. Americans think you are flirting with them. We really help each other."

Source: The Washington Post

Latin American Baseball Players Too Intense?

Some worry the pressure is creating a new generation of steroid abusers.

By Joseph Contreras
May 30, 2006

May 27, 2006 - Throughout the first two months of the 2006 baseball season, the attention of most fans and sportswriters has been riveted on San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds. The main subject of a recently published exposé about steroid use in the major leagues, Bonds made history May 20 when he tied Babe Ruth with his 714th career home run and took aim at Hank Aaron’s major-league record of 755 homers. But when the Giants hosted the St. Louis Cardinals in San Francisco three days later, it was the visiting team’s Dominican-born first baseman, Albert Pujols, who captured the headlines when he hit his 23rd home run of the season to lead the Cardinals to an 8-5 victory. The 26-year-old Pujols—who has never been linked to steroids—is leading the major leagues in four-baggers this year, and if he keeps up his torrid pace at the plate, he could break Bonds’s single-season record of 73 home runs. When Bonds reached first on a single against the Cardinals earlier this week, he had one piece of advice for Pujols as he took his lead from the base where the young Dominican was standing. “Shatter it,” advised the Giants outfielder, referring to his own historic achievement in 2001.

Latin American ballplayers have come a long way since the days when a manager could issue an edict, as the Giants’ Alvin Dark did in 1964, prohibiting players from speaking Spanish in the clubhouse. As the attitude toward Hispanic players has changed, the Latino invasion has also breathed new life into baseball in the United States. Latin players coming into the game bring competitiveness and a passion that have helped to rejuvenate a sport beset by labor strife and flagging TV ratings in the 1990s. At this year’s inaugural World Baseball Classic tournament, the national teams fielded by the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico were positively brimming with major-league-level talent and featured bona fide superstars like Pujols, Johan Santana and Carlos Beltrán. Yet it was Cuba’s squad of amateurs—whose best players do not earn in a career what New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez made in a single official at-bat last year ($42,488)—who outlasted their traditional Caribbean rivals to reach the final game against Japan. One of the sport’s top managers attributes much of the success of Latino ballplayers to their all-consuming focus on the game. “The Latin American player understands the game of baseball better than other players,” says St. Louis Cardinals skipper Tony La Russa. “They’ve been talking about it and playing it their whole lives, they’re not confused and distracted by other sports.”

There’s some evidence, however, that the intensity Latino players bring to the game also has a downside. Consider that eight of the 12 major- and minor-league ballplayers who have tested positive for steroids thus far this spring hail from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. That disturbing trend also surfaced last year when seven of the 12 American and National League players who were caught taking steroids during Major League Baseball’s first season of mandatory testing were from Latin America, even though they made up just 24.6 percent of the 829 players on active rosters and disabled lists on opening day of the 2005 season.

And in the minor leagues, just over half of the 79 players caught taking steroids in 2005 were from a dozen Latin American countries and Puerto Rico—proportionately more than the four in 10 players that hail from that region. Since organized baseball tested all players, nobody has made any accusations that the program was biased against Latino players, or that Latinos were unfairly singled out. The data raise a troubling possibility that few in baseball would like to address head-on: are players from Latin America simply too driven to succeed?

Nearly all the players and coaches interviewed for this story rejected out of hand any suggestion that players from Latin America are more prone to cheating than any other group. Most of them weren’t even aware of the high number of Latinos among major leaguers who tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2005. Some are in a state of denial: “It means nothing,” says veteran pitching coach Lee Mazzone of the Baltimore Orioles. But the Cardinals' La Russa concedes that in their single-minded pursuit of athletic excellence on the field and financial security off it, some Latin American players who “seek every avenue of improvement” may “make mistakes.” Puerto Rican catcher Javy Lopez of the Orioles also did not shy away from the issue. “They come from much poorer countries, and part of it has to do with that sense of desperation to make it to the big leagues and become a superstar.”

The Dominican-born president of a Hispanic-rights advocacy group says that steroid use is deeply ingrained in several Latin American countries, and he is calling on organized baseball to test teenage prospects for performance-enhancing drugs before they can sign on with major-league clubs and collect their bonus checks. Fernando Mateo, president of Hispanics Across America, has met with senior baseball officials and delivered a coffin to the New York City headquarters of Major League Baseball last year to publicize the steroid-related deaths of two young Dominican ballplayers in 2001. “These kids see the examples of [retired superstars] Jose Canseco and Sammy Sosa and all these players who were linked to steroids and how they performed, and they say this is the way to go,” says Mateo. “They can get away with it in Latin American countries where [star athletes] are looked upon as gods and the attitude is ‘let them do whatever they want'.” MLB commissioner Bud Selig made headlines earlier this year when he appointed former U.S. senator George Mitchell to conduct a formal probe of the steroids issue. Bonds figures to be the main focal point of the investigation, but the dirty little secret about steroids use and Latin peloteros also warrants special scrutiny from Mitchell and his aides. Numbers don’t lie, and it would be a shame if a reckless minority within the ranks of the sport’s Latin American-born contingent ends up casting aspersions on the reputation of any player with a Spanish surname.

Source: Newsweek/MSNBC