High ranking executives among the attendees included Hector Costa, Managing Director at .Fox Network; Juan Carlos Delgado, Senior Director of Branding and Communications Cartier Latin America, Guillermo Plehn, Commercial Director Televisa Publishing and Digital; Jose L. Ruiz, Senior Marketing Manager Oracle; Armando Rodriguez, General Manager Yahoo! Hispanic Americas and Enrique Cuevas, CEO of Mexican Publisher Editorial Premiere.
The following were the most interesting aspects of the Summit:
- The Cultural Implications of Technological Convergence
During her presentation, “The Increasing Integration of the Advertising and Media Business in the Spanish-speaking World”, Cynthia Evans, Managing Director at GroupM/Mediaedge:cia and Director of Research for Latin America, noted that technology is bringing people together across media and across borders. Culture and language and content play an important role on what type of people come together.
- Branding to the Latin American Middle Class
Both Guillermo Morrone, VP Marketing Head Consumers and National Accounts at Mastercard Worldwide and keynote speaker Edward Pilkington, Marketing & Innovation Director, Latin America & Caribbean at Diageo, provided the blue chip company approach to marketing to the Latin American consumer. They emphasized the importance of the emerging Latin American middle class and highlighted that Latin America is a great place to build brands particularly as these brands play towards aspirational values. According to Pilkington a consumer belongs to the middle class as soon as a third of his income is disposable income. In Latin America that tends to be the case for households whose income is between US$10,000 and $15,000. Pilkington also emphasized the importance of local brands and the concept of “premiumisation”. According to this concept, consumers start consuming a particular product, with a relatively low price, to later, with an increasing disposable income, evolve with that product into a premium product. Currently “premium products” amount to 18% of unit volume and 34% of sales for Diageo Latin America. Pilkington explained that Diageo doubled its Latin American Marketing Investment during the last 5 years. To Diageo media planning is equal to “Consumer Connection Planning”. (Diageo sells $400 million in Latin America alone of ifs Johnnie & Walker brand).
In the Q&A following the panel on luxury Advertising several media executives asked why the luxury goods advertisers have small advertising budgets. Myriam Duhau, Marketing Manager for Salvatore Ferragamo Latin America, answered that luxury brands always look for an appropriate editorial environment and that luxury goods companies also have a lot to offer to media companies in terms of editorial content. Juan Carlos Delgado, Senior Director of Branding and Communications Cartier Latin America, noted that overall sales volume in the luxury category are not large enough to warrant large advertising budgets. “We do advertise in Caras, Quien and other titles but luxury advertising amounts to less than 1% of overall sales of a large media company “.
- Panregional vs. Local Buys
In a very interesting presentation, Franklin Vargas, Director of Latin American Marketing, Genius, showed how the structure of each Latin American country’s IT market influences his marketing and media buying. A country with a strong retail distribution of products (Chile) warrants more consumer advertising. When the reseller has a very strong presence in the local market B2B media has to be used.
Amelie Ferro. CEO of Publicitas Latin America, who introduced Franklin Vargas, Julian Porras, Managing Director of Starcom MediaVest Latin America and Salvatore Ferragamo’s Myriam Duhau, noted that it is not one or the other because panregional and local buys can complement each other very well.
- Relatively Confident Consumers
Jimena Urquijo, VP Business Development TGI Latina, noted that one of the main trends her research shows is that consumers are switching from receptors to generators of content. Recent TGI research also shows that consumer confidence is strong in most Latin American countries with the exception of Argentina.
Conference Attendees will have access to the different presentations.
The 2010 Panregional Advertising and Media Summit will take place on June 3, 2010 in Miami.
To see picture of Diageo's Ed Pilkington during his keynote speech, Click here. (Photo credit: Joe Kutchera)
Genius' Franklin Vargas explaining the Pro's and Con's of the Panregional Media Buy, Click here (Photo credit: Joe Kutchera)
Guillermo Morrone of Mastercard during his presentation. Click here (Photo credit: Joe Kutchera)
Mediaedge's Cynthia Evans. Click here (Photo credit: Joe Kutchera)
Alex Banks (Comscore), Igal Rubinstein (S.com.mx), Vinicius Losacco (Warner Brothers) and Giacomo Bertaina (Universal McCann) presenting case studies during the panel "Targeting Spanish Speakers online" which was moderated by ContextWeb's Joe Kutchera. Click here. (Photo credit: Joe Kutchera)