Wonder if Olivier Francoise should be identifying and targeting opportunities for Fiat to share under the radar advertising/marketing content in the U.S. market?

The rally like driving would have been a lot more appealing to football fans than J-Lo car chase...probably a lot less expensive too. Hope this wasn't a veiled attempt to tap into the NFL's strong interest in the Hispanic market.

The new 'adidas is all in' campaign has been launched and its a great example of the mash-up world we live in today. A place where everything is merging, and the lines are blurring. Interesting to see the action sports side of the business playing a featured role in adidas largest marketing effort to date. Things are going global for sure...

São Paulo, foi escolhida uma das 5 cidades do mundo a sediar uma prestigiosa disputa na categoria amador: o D.C. King of Series, que existe também em Barcelona, Dublin, Los Angeles e Vancouver.

The DC King of São Paulo is another clear sign that action sports culture and lifestyle continues to move towards global status. Now in its third year, it shows where things are heading.

So...kind of a no brainer right? Mobile is key to reaching the U.S. urban youth segment. It significantly impacts sales of action sports companies in the all important 18 to 34 year old segment.

According to Mark Grondin, SVP of Marketing at Shopatron, “Brands with younger customer groups, like Spy Optic for example, are getting as much as 5%-9% of their traffic from mobile devices. Of those mobile visitors, about 2% are currently purchasing, but that number is also steadily increasing.”

Recent studies, including one by Google, indicate that mobile is a must for reaching the U.S. Hispanic market. 2011 will be the year that more brands follow the rabbit down the digital hole.

Just think about these stats:

• 93% of U.S. Hispanics use a mobile phone regularly
• 45% of U.S. Hispanic mobile phone users have smartphones compared to 34% of general market
• 87% of U.S. Hispanic mobile phone users have contract plans and only 8% have pre-paid plans

Frame-Switching occurs all around us...via @iso50

It's been a long time coming. I've foreseen it for the last 4+ years...

MediaPost recently shared some predictions for 2011 for the U.S. Hispanic market. While none of them really surprised me, the 5th one made me smile.

#5 The Birth of the Hispanic Youth Market

This will be the toughest nut to crack for marketers and advertising professionals of all stripes -- general market, Hispanic, digital, direct response, social media and everything in between. Yet I see Hispanic youth as the biggest marketing opportunity to come out of 2011.

While some marketers may not know where to start. I do, and it begins with the kind of thinking that spawned the M.A.S. Report. Since 2006, Equipo Roca has maintained a sustained effort to use the action sports culture and lifestyle as a source of understanding the population shift affecting the urban youth market.

Charles Bethea of ESPN Action Sports wrote an editorial on the report, and you an see why I'm smiling at the last 2011 prediction.

The report concludes: "Even isolated from the pending results of the upcoming 2010 Census, these statistics already point towards an inevitable 'tipping point' on the horizon. Clearly, the next wave of growth for the snow sports category squarely hinges on demonstrating and growing the value and appeal of the sport to multicultural millennials."

Not necessarily going to hear anything you haven't heard already...The difference is that Valdes shares a right here and now point of view - 2011. This is no longer discussion about what the future will look like, rather where the market is at today.

My one knock with Valdes presentation is the choice to highlight marketing efforts aimed at the less acculturated segment, it's especially puzzling considering she mentions the youth factor. I think it would have been more powerful had she ended the conversation around biculturals.

Again, a broader approach centered around biculturals are the case studies that need to be identified. Marketers need to be challenged to think differently about who their customer is right now. This is why the M.A.S. Report is a unique perspective in the urban & youth lifestyle segments. We wanted to bring an innovative approach lens to the idea of in culture marketing.

I'll refrain from claiming ownership of the term cross-cultural, but assure you that Equipo Roca is an early adopter of the idea, since 2007 actually.

The term seems to be popping up more and more these days. Yet, it seems nobody knows what cross-cultural marketing means. This is why I found The Big Tent post by Ken Muench pretty interesting. He makes a good argument for developing a manifesto...

Cross-culturalism is, essentially, the leveraging of ethnicity and culture in "general market" advertising. It's about the African-American, Hispanic and Asian voices not being relegated solely to a special channel or publication, but also treated as authors of the main play, as they already are in pop culture.

Recently we released the M.A.S. Snow Report, and our approach really embodied the above statement. We sought to understand what is already taking place in the Millennial youth market. So we captured analytical data of the market size and supported them with voices of Hispanics that were already engaging with snowboard lifestyle. It was about framing things up in a cultural context. We did it because the general agency/brand snow market approach wasn't addressing the urban market right, while the multicultural agency/brand side is not well versed in the action sports space. The opportunity to fill the void presented us with a tiger style test...

The challenge of embracing cross-cultural marketing is going to largely depend on the agency/brand gatekeepers. You are the one's who have to acknowledge and move away from traditional thinking. Muench addresses this well with his four point sniff test.

1. Cross-culturalism is not an advertising melting pot. It's about each culture's innate uniqueness coming across as such. That's exactly what makes things interesting to today's consumers.

2. Research is essential. Cross-culturalism requires people intimately familiar with the groups. Period. Otherwise the resulting hollowness will be counterproductive. Solid, methodical multicultural depth in planning, media, account management and creative are absolutely essential. Anything else is simply a sham.

3. Cross-culturalism does not negate the opportunity of creating an African-American, Hispanic or Asian-specific program. And if the "general market" campaign was done with these consumers in a central role, then the tailoring won't have to be so severe that you end up with a schizophrenic brand.

4. A total-market advertising agency can do it -- if it meets the criteria in point No. 2. A multicultural agency can do it -- if it sees beyond the confines of its own silo.

Scott Goodson has a great editorial up on the Forbes blog. He reflects on the upheaval being unleashed on the advertising industry's modus operandi...I like how hes seeks out students, youth are the "lifeblood of marketing" and they will chart the path in a unique new way.

The change has been happening for years. So many of us have seen the shift. The industry itself help to create the shift. All the fragmentation is causing a lot of confusion and forcing many companies and professionals to reboot.

I have been one of those people championing the idea of embracing market changes for years now. Doing it before others even realized it. As an expert and insider into Latino/multicultural market, I've felt strongly that industry's future is connected to what one student, Carina Bouganim, astutely observes.

The future will need to address the growing needs of the “multicultural” audiences and the lack agencies engaging with this growing segment. It will take new thinking to be a problem solver of client issues.

The above reason is why the M.A.S. Report was created. See, there are very folks that are still getting it. While reading the rest of the responses it becomes evident that this alone is tied to all the others things happening in the market, especially crowdsourcing & digital marketing trends. Its become to hard to argue against engaging the multicultural audience with a new and fresh perspective. 2010 is almost over, but it will be the year that will be remembered as where the future started...

“The future is bright and belongs to those who have embraced change and want to create change…take ownership of it instead of waiting for it and jump on.” - Via Anthony Kalamut

While reading 'Combining Print and Digital Ad Content with QR Barcodes', couldn't help but think of the applications this has on urban youth market. I mean can you really think of a better tool designed to educate or engage a consumer who knows little about your product or service? Magazines tend to be the initial and most accessible media outlet to lifestyle 'aspirationalists' out there...

Millennial youth's affinity for all things digital is well known by now...I've argued it would be pivotal for brands to devise a coordinated digital strategy built around cultural intelligence. The pieces are in place to connect with aspirational bicultural/bilingual urban youth segment, cause they really are looking for the content that introduces them to a new world. On top of it all, because these efforts live digitally, tools are emerging to that conversion rates and monitor whether clicks on ads.

ScanLife started working with Transworld SNOWboarding, Brad Steward at Bonfire, and Kevin Winkel at K2 Snowboarding in an effort to bridge print and digital advertising reach. The image above has barcode in the lower left image that redirects a mobile user to a branded video clip. Potential for retail oriented integrations is tremendous...

Both companies see this technology as a way to change advertising and attract consumers in the future. Winkel says it’s very intriguing to be able to use one code, and then consistently change the content, passing off information to consumers by using sales tools and even products; “In the end it is another tool we can use and something that has definitely changed how we create our interactive media and the direct tie between that and our print materials."