Approximately 150 marketers and media executives targeting U.S. Hispanic and Latin American consumers gathered yesterday (Monday) at the Westin Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables, FL, for the 14th Annual Marketing to U.S. Hispanics and Latin Americans, organized by Strategic Research Institute (SRI). The event concludes this afternoon.
Corporations that were represented included Allstate, Key Bank, Toyota, Visa, SAP Latin America and HSBC. A wide array of media companies also were present including BabyCenter en Español, Yahoo/Telemundo, Batanga, Televisa Publishing, TodoBebe, AARP, Megazines Publications, Impremedia Digital, Starmedia and MSN Latino.
Print media Publishers going online
This years conference has a heavy enphasis on digital media. In a panel titled "How are print publications impacted by the increasing popularity of online media", Guillermo Plehn, Commercial Director for the U.S. Hispanic and Puerto Rican markets at Televisa Publishing, said that his company's esmas.com website has 2 million Hispanic unique users.
Plehn added that both the site Mexican audience as well as the site U.S. Hispanic audience prefered content are celebrities/TV Novelas, Sports and News. Peter Zeuschner National Sales Manager of AARP Publications and Roberto Sroka, Group publisher of Megazines Publications noted that their online properties do not cater to the same audience in print and online.
Televisa's Plehn added that People en españols website is in English and that the Time Inc publication translates its spanish language magazine content to English to satisfy its primarily bilingual and English dominant online audience. The publishers agreed that print media properties online advertising revenues are not yet significant. Megazine's Sroka noted that one way of achieving higher visibility and revenues is by entering alliances with pure play Internet media properties.
