Stephen Palacios, Added Value Cheskin’s intercultural lead, will be one of the speakers at the ANA Multicultural Marketing Thought Leadership Forum hosted by MillerCoors. The ANA Multicultural Marketing Thought Leadership Forums will discuss key issues to help elevate the impact of marketing to an increasingly multicultural nation. These will be exclusive “invitation only” events, bringing together client-side marketers for peer-to-peer discussion and exchange of best practices. Each meeting will be focused on a single key issue.

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This post was originally written for AdAge

One way we might judge this year’s Super Bowl ads is by how much they reflect a total-market view of the world.

I am not talking about ethnic casting, or ethnic spokespeople, but rather the presence of cultural cues. These are subtle suggestions that ethnic values or habits — primarily Hispanic, since that is the most powerful multicultural influence in the country right now — are being assimilated into mainstream media. Read more…

Post originally written for The Huffington Post’s Latino Voices

Fifty years ago Maria’s “problem” was a would-be nun who wanted to marry a widower and become the mother of his five children. Today in the United States the problem is that the Von Trapp kids would more than likely be fatherless, and more and more Maria’s are having children without getting married.

The out-of-wedlock birth rate for Hispanic women in the U.S. reached over 53 percent of new births in 2010, according to the National Vital Statistics Report on Births: Preliminary Data for 2010. With Hispanic birth rates wildly outpacing the national average, this issue merits serious consideration given that out-of-wedlock births all too often go hand in hand with poverty, low educational attainment and propensity toward incarceration. Read more…

Added Value Cheskin’s Intercultural lead, Stephen Palacios, writes for ANA Magazine, exploring the challenges – and benefits – of a “Total Market” strategy.

“Is [NFL running back] Reggie Bush my African American strategy, or just my strategy?” asked the CMO of a Fortune 100 company in response to a question on ethnic marketing.  Having a dynamic sports hero as a spokesperson was intended to appeal to broadly to all consumers. The fact that he appeals more deeply to African Americans was a plus, making Bush both “efficient” and engaging. Read more…

Post-election analysis is in full force and the prominent role of the overwhelmingly pro-Obama Hispanic vote is front and center. From hues and cries (Bill O’Reilly) to demographic tut-tutting (Juan Williams’ “Obama’s Daunting Demographic Message for the GOP”), pundits and columnists alike are opining on how Republicans have “lost the country,” or at least marginalized their chances for national governance by alienating Hispanics. The core issue? Immigration reform.

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India is set to become one of the world’s top three consumer markets for diamonds. We asked Neil Martin, Head of Brand Planning at Forevermark (part of the De Beers groups of companies) to describe the challenges facing De Beers and how working with Added Value has helped prepare the business to capitalise on the market potential. Read more…

Added Value Cheskin’s intercultural lead, Stephen Palacios, will join a panel of experts at next week’s UniWorld AdWeek Panel: “Bridging the Gap Between Cultures and Brands: The Ultimate Power Trip”.

Led by Uniworld’s CEO, Monique Nelson, the conversation will include “a diverse spectrum of visionaries who drive, curate and harness culture, including Olga Mobolade, Constance White and industry insider Jack Myers.”  Read more…

Marketers Split Over the Value of Ethnic-Inclusive  — But It’s Just the Beginning.

The most important development in multicultural marketing is the notion of the “total market” –  shifting from targeting particular ethnic consumers to strategies that will appeal to a multicultural nation. This past week, we saw how the concept is still in its gestation stage, causing both confusion and potentially earth-shattering shifts. Read more…

The proliferation of Hispanic online panels has ignited a debate around the efficacy of online research among Hispanics.  In Q1 2012 Added Value Cheskin launched an investigation into this matter using several of the hundreds of Hispanic studies we have conducted in the past few years. All interviews collected were from a random selection of Hispanic sample.  Respondents were post classified into the appropriate acculturation level based on several measures including language dominance, media consumption, proportion of life spent in the US and attitudes/ behaviors.  Below are our findings.

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Developments in social science, global trends and demographics all reinforce the significant benefits of bilingual education.  Despite that, American schools show a steady decline in language programs. How can this be?

First, let’s look at the conditions for bilingualism.  There have always been benefits to being able to speak more than one language; recent studies show the depth of those benefits: “Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.” Read more…