I attended a couple of panels that spoke about marketing for Latinos with technology, so I’ve decided to blog about both of them at once. The first speaker was Ana Grace, Global Team Site Manager for Best Buy. I initially cringed when I found this out because I remember the long nights we spent working on the failed pitch a few years ago. But after listening to her for a few minutes, I got over it. She spoke about the Spanish website they developed after numerous requests from their border-area stores. This immediately piqued my interest since I recently worked on the Spanish Legacy EX site. Interestingly, they found that many of their Spanish-speaking customers are big consumers and welcomed the site with open arms. Some of the customers’ requests included mirroring the Spanish site to the English one (no soccer-themed homepage or pictures of piñatas), offering the exact same deals (which BB obviously intended to do all along), and the ability for in-store pickup. She also spoke about the lack of trust that many consumers in this market have toward big businesses and the immense benefits if those trust issues can be overcome.

The second speaker was a Kety Esquivel who I believe works for Ogilvy. She was an amazing speaker who also spoke about the potential in the Hispanic market (and in particular marketing for Latinas). Some of the issues she discussed had to do with what labels such as “Hispanic” and “Latino” mean to different people. A few of the attendees offered insight into Univision’s role in marketing and the differences between marketing to American-born Latinos and recent Spanish-speaking immigrants. At the end of her presentation, Kety said that Latinas have gone a long way in recent years, but stressed that there was still a long way to go in how they’re perceived. To prove this point, she asked attendees to raise their hands if they were online. Ninety-percent of the room raised their hands. She then asked everyone to Google the term “Latinas” (don’t try this at work). Suddenly, the room was very quiet.