FallLineup for PMP Books

We at Paramount Books are very excited about our fall lineup of books. In addition to a new book by Tom Asacker, which we mentioned in our last post, we are also tackling some new topics and bringing new insights to some older topics.

Erin O. Patton, founder of The MasterMind Group is working on a book on the effect of the hip-hop Generation X on pop culture. If you've ever wondered why urban trends among minorities have such a powerful impact on the rest of American, and indeed, global, culture, Erin explains it and gives many examples of how and why hip-hop culture has made it into the mainstream.

Mickey Brazeal is bringing us a book on RFID and the Customer Experience. (Radio Frequency Identification). RFID is widely in use at the present time to track shipments of goods, but Brazeal explains how it will be used in the future to improve the customer experience. Its uses could include greater safety in our food supply by tracking which farms (and in some cases, fields and animals) exactly the jalapeno peppers, lettuce, tomatoes, beef, etc. have come from. RFID can also be used to cut down on health care costs. By using RFID to track hospital equipment and drugs, for example, hospitals would not have to have twice as many wheelchairs and respirators as they really need, and they would know when drugs are walking out the pharmacy door.

Miriam Muley will bring us a new book on women and diversity which will help businesses understand why catering to and employing women of all colors improves bottom line results. Miriam will be a featured speak at the PME M2Moms conference in Chicago October 22 and 23 and her book will be available for all attendees.

These books are not yet posted on the Paramount Books site, but they will be shortly. If you want to be among the first to know when they are available and receive a pre-publication (discounted) offer, visit www.paramountbooks.com and sign up for our email newsletter, What's New in Marketing.

Are marketers talking too much?

Many of you have enjoyed Tom Asacker's little book, A Clear Eye for Branding, in which he and a seat companion on a flight have an extended conversation about what branding is and how marketers need to rethink their approaches to branding.

Asacker has been working on a new book called A Little Less Conversation. It will serve as a great companion to A Clear Eye. In it, he commiserates with an executive he meets in an airport after both their flights have been cancelled. Almost any business traveler can relate to that.

But over lunch they have an engaging conversation about why the hard-sell approach to marketing no longer works and why marketers need to forget about their products and establish an emotional connection with their customers, talking to them less and listening to them more.

Several PMP titles have expanded on this theme recently. Dan Herman's book Outsmart the MBA Clones isn't really a slam against MBAs. It is simply a challenge to think outside the box, to consider fresh approaches to bringing the consumer inside the marketing circle instead of leaving him out in the cold and assuming that if you sell features and benefits hard enough your product or service will flourish.

Outsmart the MBA Clones is already available and you'll be hearing more about Tom Asacker's book in the near future as we prepare it for the printer. If you want to make sure you are among the first to have it, sign up on www.paramountbooks.com for the bi-weekly email announcements of new books and special offers called What's New in Marketing?

Black Americans and the Internet

Author Pepper Miller recently presented the results of a Radio One/Yankelovich survey to Target Market News' ninth annual African-American Research and Advertising Summit.

Among the findings of the study were that Black Americans have caught up with white Americans when it comes to using the Internet. Pepper commented that one reason studies have shown Black Americans lagging so far behind their white peers is that surveyors have asked about computer use vs. online use. "Access tells a bigger story about who does what, when, and where online. Radio One and Yankelovich asked the better question and got it right."

Pepper is one of the outstanding Black American researchers today who knows what the right questions are and how to ask them to gain insight into the market.

You can access more from the study and her comments about it in this Ad Age article, by clicking here.

Listen to this man's advice

One of our favorite trendspotters (and former boss) is Peter Francese, the founder of American Demographics magazine. Although the magazine has now been incorporated into Advertising Age, Francese still occasionally writes articles about demographic trends.


His latest, which you can find by clicking here, talks about the changing face of the American consumer and the difficulty that many businesses are having responding to these changes.

One of the principal trends is that the average U.S. head of household is just six months shy of age 50. This means that households are entering the age of maintaining the status quo, as one of our other favorite trendspotters, the editor-in-chief of New Strategist publications, Cheryl Russell, has pointed out many times. When consumers enter that phase in their lives, they are less likely to take risks to try new products or spend money that they don't have, and they are concerned about things that seem to them to be changing the status quo--such as immigration.

With the aging of the population is coming renewed interest in baby boomers, since they are the group driving the aging trend. We've seen an increase in the number of people ordering books on this topic, and it's not just established business people. A significant number of baby boomers are interested in entrepreneurship and they are doing more research to find out what kinds of businesses and services might appeal to their fellow boomers.

Paramount Books helps them out with titles like Marketing to Leading Edge Baby Boomers, Advertising to Baby Boomers, and Baby Boomers and Their Parents.

Making messages more authentic for non-white Americans

Yankelovich Monitor Multicultural Marketing Study reports that only 25 percent of all African-Americans and Hispanic consumers find marketing and advertising personally and culturally relevant.

Yankelovich has it right, but it doesn't have to be that way. Black Americans and U.S. Hispanics are looking for authenticity, not just cultural artifacts that appear to speak to them.

The weekly Yankelovich Monitor blog reports "Like all consumers, African Americans and Hispanics crave marketing communications and product offerings that reflect a deep understanding of their emotional and cultural desires. For example, among African-American and Hispanic consumers who read African-American and Spanish-language newspapers, the vast majority say they do so because they find the content more personally relevant than mass-market newspapers."

Incidently you can sign up for the weekly blog here. It's a great way to get informed commentary about a variety of marketing issues.

And, you can have your whole team learn more about how African-Americans and both U.S. born and foreign-born Hispanics view the world and what "authenticy" means to them by reading some of Paramount Market Publishing's excellent titles, including What's Black About It? by Pepper Miller and Herb Kemp and a just-released book on Hispanics, Hispanic Customers for Life, by bestselling PMP author, M. Isabel Valdes. Isabel delves deeper into the Hispanic culture by looking at Hispanics by generation and how long they have lived in the United States. You can find more information about each of these books and many more multicultural titles by clicking here.

Boomers and Financial Planning

NSON Opinion Research recently conducted a telephone omnibus survey in conjunction with Dr. Les Harris, president of Mature Marketing and Research, and author of two books on baby boomers: After Fifty and After Sixty.

NSON asked 570 people who were 40 years old or older what type of financial planning assistance, if any, they used. Over 60 percent of respondents said they do not use stockbrokers, accountants or other financial consultants to assist them with their financial planning activities.

However, people aged 55 to 64, the age bracket immediately prior to retirement, are using financial consultants more than younger and older groups. The study also showed that women are more likely than men to use financial planners.

Listening to Your Customers Can Provide Big Dividends

Do you know what your customers or bloggers are saying about your company and your products? Marketers used to be able to assess the perception of their company or their products by simply monitoring the media and reading any letters of complaint that came by mail, but that was pre-Internet and social networking.

Now there are more than 80 million blogs, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, video aggregators like YouTube and EveryZing and thousands of other social media sites on the web where customers talk with each other and make all kinds of comments, good and bad about your firm, your competitors, and your industry.

In his new book, The Art of Strategic Listening, Finding Market Intelligence through Blogs and Other Social Media, information specialist Robert Berkman explores what you can gain from listening in to blogs and other social media, the ethics of such listening, and gives step-by-step guidance for setting up different kinds of monitoring systems such as alerts and RSS feeds, among others. Drawing on his training as a journalist and researcher, he also provides tips on assessing the credibility of the sources you are monitoring.

And what about information overload? If you are listening to hundreds or perhaps thousands of different conversations, how can you organize them and make sense of it all? Berkman also attacks the overload problem, saying that while you must simply accept the fact that you can’t follow it all, you can make strategic decisions about how and where to find what he calls the “key conversations” and “influentials” that truly impact your firm and industry—and how to filter out the less relevant and trivial discussions.

An interactive pdf of the book with links to all websites mentioned as well as numerous onlinetools and tutorials to help you set up strategic listening systems is available exclusively from the books publisher at www.paramountbooks.com. The pdf allows you to search the book as well as to easily access the sources mentioned in it.

Whether your job is to actually set up systems for strategic listening or to manage those who will do so, The Art of Strategic Listening, will help you better understand the systems and how to manage the information you acquire.

Robert Berkman is the editor of The Information Advisor, an international monthly journal for business researchers that he founded in 1988. He has authored several books on research, technology, the media, and the Internet. He serves as Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies & Film at the New School in New York City where his focus is on emerging media technologies.

The Art of Strategic Listening, Finding Market Intelligence through Blogs and Other Social Media by Robert Berkman (Ithaca, NY: Paramount Market Publishing, Inc., 2008) is available at www.paramountbooks.com or by calling toll-free, 888-787-8100. You can reach Robert Berkman at robertberkman@gmail.com

10 Tips for Identifying and Launching Marketing Hits

Marketing hits, an increasingly important type of success in today’s marketing landscape, have popped up recently across the globe in a vast spectrum of industries previously not considered "hit driven". Crocs, the Hummer, the iPhone and the Da Vinci Code are just a few.
Marketing hits are meteoric successes whose economic justification lies in the fact that, for a limited time, they gain significantly higher market share than the long-term brands within their industry. They are launched by established companies, as well as by complete unknowns. They might be “front brand”, while in the background lies a familiar name (the Mini and BMW), while in other instances they are stand-alone (Tamaguchi). Their growing impact in marketing, resulting from radical changes in consumer behavior, compels veteran marketers to explore "new tricks".

The following practical guidelines are part of the wealth of concepts and tools designed to help you thrive in today's dynamic marketplace as presented in Dr. Dan Herman's provocative new book, Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing and Branding. The book cracks the secret of companies that have known immense success, adored by their customers, while not being imitated by competitors.

These 10 tips use some of those principles to help you both identify potentials and launch marketing hits:

1. Familiarity
80% of any hit-to-be product or service must be based on characteristics that have been tried and tested. By keeping the product familiar and intuitive to use, you assure quick and easy adoption.

2. Cool! Wow! Twisted!
20% of the product must be innovative, offering added value on top of any competition. It must cater to at least one of certain types of needs, such as preserving your youth and attracting attention, for which consumers incessantly seek new solutions. It must include an element that induces its “viral” nature, providing customers with a good story to tell about the product to other potential customers, and thus leading to word-of-mouth propagation.

3. Mass Appeal
In most cases, marketing hits are not intended for a niche, but rather for a wider market in which they can spread fast and rapidly reach large sales. Consequently, the price should not serve as a barrier and, where relevant, payment and financing plans are recommended.

4. Simplicity
The product itself should be easy to identify and to understand. It is important to limit the number of versions and options for customization.

5. Timing
Ensure that the target audience has tired of the former hit before launching yours. Identify moments of weakness among the competition. For some product categories, it is critical for the launch to coincide with a particular season.

6. Sexiness
Create blatant packaging through striking and contemporary design. Hits (except in the luxury industry) are not notable for refinement and sophistication.

7. Creative dispersion
Many marketing hits are creative in their distribution channels, using unexpected partners in order to attain the largest spread in the shortest time.

8. Tease
In the period prior to the launch use a combination of advertising, PR, word-of-mouth, or, as in the case of child-oriented hits, TV programming with the intent of developing anticipation and a trigger for a viral effect.

9. The “Herd Effect”
By appealing to consumption leaders early on, providing them with discount prices or other special conditions, the product earns endorsers that pull in the masses.

10. "Blitz"
The launch itself needs to create as much of a “big bang” as possible, as marketing hits (except in those industries, such as automobiles, where “short term” is calculated in years) are generally not supported post-launch. The launch plan should include a concentrated and intensive campaign of multi-channel marketing communication, promotion and field-activity in order to develop a viral effect.

Managing the lifecycle of the hit and monitoring its penetration of the market allows you to recognize when a certain hit is nearing the end of its life and the time has come to launch a new one. Proper management allows you to identify ways to lengthen the life expectancy of the hit by launching other products under the same brand, or by launching an updated version that targets a group that has previously not been engaged. On rare occasions, such close supervision allows the hit to claim a long-term stake in the market and turn into a “classic” brand. We must never forget that the consumer is the ultimate judge!

Dr. Dan Herman is a globally renowned strategy consultant, an author and a lecturer. To discover more ideas and tips from Dr. Herman's “Outsmart the MBA Clones: The Alternative Guide to Competitive Strategy, Marketing, and Branding”, click here.

How to Avoid the Seven Common Mistakes of Marketers

Every day, without knowing it, marketers of all kinds make the same common mistakes – and end up destroying their brands. So says the author of a forthcoming book, Brand Busters: Seven Common Mistakes Marketers Make. In it, Chris Wirthwein, CEO of 5MetaCom shares keys to identifying and avoiding these seven basic errors, commonly made when marketing technical and scientific products:

1. Taking “needs” instead of wants
2. Falling in love with your product, instead of your customer
3. Believing that marketing is a Science or an Art
4. Trying to please everyone
5. Forgetting that people forget
6. Believing your price is too high – without proof
7. Believing you must sell your product on an economic basis

Brand Busters helps readers learn from the slip-ups of others and instructs them on how to avoid mistakes and get on with efficient marketing. A quick and easy read, the book provides sound, yet surprisingly simple to apply advice. No matter what kind of product or service they offer, marketers will discover in Brand Busters new ideas for making marketing more efficient and effective.

Just how important is avoiding pitfalls? The author explains: “In the best case, mistakes go unnoticed,” says Wirthwein. “The marketing fails to connect, so the audience ignores you and moves on. But in the worst case,” he adds, “a mistake can destroy a product or financially ruin an entire industry for decades to come.” Wirthwein says readers will discover a true-life example of just this type of marketing disaster in chapter six.

With wit and wisdom – plus dozens of pertinent examples – Wirthwein shares insights based on his 20+ years of experience running an ad agency that specializes in technical and scientific products. In that time, he has advised some of the world’s best known, most successful brands on how to market their innovations in the U.S. and across the globe. “To be truthful, it’s stuff that’s really hard to market,” says the author. “And the secrets of how to do it have never been written…until now.”

A List of Favorites from a Marketing Prof

From time to time we ask our customers and friends in marketing and market research the titles of their all-time favorite marketing books--the ones that stay on their shelves and that they consult. With the plethora of new marketing books available, it is surprising how many of their favorite books are "oldies." This is a list from Mark L. Renaghan, a retired associate dean and marketing professor at the Statler School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University. If you'd like to submit your list of "favorites," send an email to doris@paramountbooks.com. Please make sure to tell us how you would like to be identified.

Most of these books are available from amazon.com.


1. Future Perfect by Stan Davis
2. Multivariate Data Analysis by Joseph Hair et al
3. Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
4. Delivering Profitable Value by David Lanning
5. Marketing Research: Methodological Foundations by Gilbert Churchill

Tween and cell phone use

According to a new MediaPost article, pre-teens are more connected than ever before, thanks to a rise in mobile phone use.

The Nielsen Company released the findings of an in-depth study on the mobile media and cross-media behavior of U.S. tweens (ages 8-12). The report estimates that 35% of tweens own a mobile phone, 20% of tweens have used text messaging, and 21% of tweens have used ring & answer tones, the article said.

The "godfathers" of the tween market are Dave Siegel, Greg Livingston, and Tim Coffey of The Wonder Group whose groundbreaking book, The Great Tween Buying Machine, came out in 2001 and for the first time defined what it means to be a "tween" consumer. You can still buy copies of the original hardcover of this book from Paramount Market Publishing.

Based on their on-going research on kids and markets, the three co-founders of WonderGroup wrote The New SuperConsumer, Mom+Kid in 2006, defining the new relationship between moms and their kids and the growing influence of kids on family purchases.

One point that The New Super Consumer makes is how much more proficient tweens and teens are at multi-tasking than their parents are. With the rise of cell phone use and text messaging, this multitasking is increasing exponentially. Even walking down the street now is usually accompanied by some other activity, especially the use of the cell phone.

Pepper Miller on Black consumer value

Despite worrying statistics about the state of Black Americans, co-author Pepper Miller (What's Black About It?) says that there are other trends that are hopeful signs for the Black community. In an article in the Nov. 16 issue of Advertising Age, she cites three positive developments:

• A growing Black consciousness movement that is quiet but persistent led by Black mega churches and internet organizations such as colorofchange.org.
• The growing economic power of Black females.
• The emergence of "Thrivals," identified by Nat Irvin, "who are dictating a new future for themselves free from the history of victimization and oppression."

Miller is working on a new book about African Americans in the U.S., which I'm sure will contain further insights based on the market research of her firm, The Hunter Miller Group.

Dunkin' Donuts: The Inside Story

The Nov. 27th Morning Edition on NPR featured a story about Dunkin' Donuts new marketing campaign that pits it directly against Starbucks. The program interviewed the chief of strategy for Hill Holiday, the agency that created the new advertising campaigns.

What you didn't learn from the interview is revealed in Dona Vitale's book, Consumer Insights 2.0, which includes a detailed case study of how Dunkin' Donuts did its research and discovered how to differentiate itself from Starbucks and become a national brand.

Consumer Insights 2.0 tells readers how to set up a Consumer Insights department within a company and use its resources to develop new initiatives throughout an entire company. With the new attention to the Dunkin' Donuts campaigns which grew directly out of the work of the Consumer Insights department at Dunkin, other consumer companies may finally get the drift: that a marketing research department which serves a whole company has more power than having numerous departments and divisions do research on their own without integrating the findings.

Green Customer News launches

Local Companies Cooperate to Distribute News About Green Consumers

Ithaca, NY- Nov. 27, 2007 As consumers increase their consciousness about the impact of businesses on the environment, businesses are paying more attention to how to market their products to these more eco-conscious consumers.

To help marketers learn more about their potential “green” customers, Paramount Market Publishing, Inc. today launched a weekly electronic newsletter called GreenCustomerNews in cooperation with Syracuse-based Earthsense.

Earthsense has surveyed 30,000 U.S. adults, focusing on issues of environment and sustainability and their impact on people’s purchase decisions, voting behavior, attitudes toward companies, and personal product choices. The Earthsense Eco-Insights Survey integrates over 240 environmental, health and other databases to provide unique profiles of communities and consumer segments.

GreenCustomerNews uses data from the on-going surveys of Earthsense to help consumer marketers better understand the changing attitudes of U.S. customers on issues that affect the environment and how those changing attitudes affect purchase behavior.

Besides consumer demographics, the electronic version of GreenCustomerNews provides interactive links to resources and examples of the kinds of advertising and products that are resonating with American consumers. Subscribers may also print out a version of the newsletter to share with colleagues.
The challenge for companies in today's business environment is to capitalize efficiently on consumerism in a sustainable manner. Corporate social responsibility is no longer a buzzword. Common business terms such as “triple bottom line” and “balanced scorecard” reflect this shift in focus. According to Amy Hebard, PhD, president and founder of Earthsense, “Companies that focus on the ideals of people, planet, and profit as the three pillars of responsible business tell us that addressing social and environmental issues is not in conflict with their financial goals, and can be critical to long-term corporate success. But they are looking for smart data to help them prioritize and best address stakeholder concerns. Our data help them do exactly that.”

Doris Walsh, president of Paramount Market Publishing, added, “We saw this as an excellent opportunity to make sure that the data being collected by Earthsense is readily available to businesses who need it. By distributing the newsletter electronically, we are making our own effort to cut down on the use of natural resources while making timely and relevant information easily accessible to busy marketers.”
Click here for sample issue and subscription information for GreenCustomerNews.

Bob Berkman, author of The Art of Strategic Listening: Finding Market Intelligence on Blogs and Social Media speaks at conference

Bob Berkman, author of The Art of Strategic Listening: Finding Market Intelligence on Blogs and Social Media is going to speak at the 2008 Connecticut Library Association (CLA) Conference.

2008 CLA Conference

* Date: April 28 - 30, 2008
* Place: Mystic Marriott Hotel & Spa
* The 117th Annual Conference will be held Monday, April 28 - Wednesday, April 30, 2008. Details will be posted when available!

www.ctlibraryassociation.org

When color isn't a good thing

Ever since newspapers have added color to their pages, it has become more difficult for older eyes (that's 50 and over and sometimes 40) to read many of the advertisements. The reason is that advertisers have gotten sucked into believing that if their ad has a colored background it will be more eyecatching.

The comics are especially bad offenders. If you love Doonesbury, it is frustrating not to be able to see the words of your favorite characters, but when those words are in tiny type, on gold, tan, or green backgrounds, they are really hard to read. And Doonesbury is certainly not the only offender.

One reason advertisers, comic strip artists, and others believe that type on color works is that they often look at the draft from a laser printer. The type from that printer will show up much clearer than on newsprint which absorbs the ink.

Most of the books on boomers that we publishing these days have a section that talks about the physical issues that begin to affect people as they pass into their 60s. Advertisers should be aware of these. Like it or not, they do have an effect on response rates. And twentysomething advertising designers aren't as tuned in as they should be.

For more on this, consult books like Advertising to Baby Boomers by Chuck Nyren, After Sixty, edited by Leslie Harris and Michelle Edelman, and Baby Boomers and Their Parents by George Moschis and Anil Mathur.

Finding a book close to home

Many times potential bookbuyers ask us whether there is a copy of a specific book in a library near them. For a long time, it was difficult to answer this question. Although many libraries buy directly from Paramount, even more libraries use services known to the industry as library jobbers. When we sell to these jobbers we have no idea who the end user will be.

The problem has been solved by the introduction of www.WorldCat.org. This website allows you to enter the name of a book, its ISBN, or author. Give the site your zip code and it will list the libraries that have the title, from the closest to you to the furthest away. It is also a good way to find out just how popular a book is with librarians. Soon you will be able to click from a link on www.paramountbooks.com to find which of our books are in which libraries worldwide.

Google Book Search provides the same information. Enter the title of a book that interests you and then click on the line that says, "Find this book in a library." You can find Google Book Search in the "Advanced Search" section of Google.

Obviously booksellers and publishers like Paramount like to sell directly to customers. But we also like our books to be read and used. If the library is your preference, use one of these handy tools to locate a book in a library near you. If there is no library near you with the title, don't hestitate to let your librarian know that you would like to be able to have the book.

Spanish language NETWORKS have doubled

Spanish language NETWORKS have doubled...

National Spanish-language broadcast networks
1992-1993 2
2006-2007 4

along with their AUDIENCE...

Combined average primetime audience of Hispanic viewers
1992-1993 2.4 million
2006-2007 4.1 million

and AD SPENDING

Combined average primetime audience of Hispanic viewers
2001 $1.8 billion
2006 $3.05 billion +

-Nielsen Monitor-Plus and Nielsen Media Relations

Not such a big market? Look beyond those numbers-
If you need to know the real size of this audience, what they're watching, and what they buy-you need Latinization by Cristina Benetiz:

page 72 . . .

Just prior to the 2006 Major League season, Angles owner Arte Moreno signed a lucrative contract with Fox Sports Net.

page 75 . . .

. . . the 2006 World Cup received major network coverage on ABC, ESPN, and Univision . . . a new 24-hour soccer channel, GolTV, features soccer teams from all of Latin America. GolTV has signed deals with many major U.S. cable carriers, and in 2006 signed a deal with DirecTV now reaching 7.5 million households.

page 102 . . .

. . . the 2005 Super Bowl -- the first time Toyota developed a bicultural, bilingual ad with Spanish and English dialogue. Since May 2004, Toyota has ranked number one in the Hispanic market.
Read more >>

PMP Direct Price: $24.95 Order now >>

Make sure your whole marketing, advertising, and sales team is on the same page
5-Pack Price: $99.00 Order now >>

Health insurance

The U.S. Census Bureau reported last week that the percentage of people without health insurance climbed to 15.8 percent in 2006, up from 15.3 percent in 2005. The number of people without health insurance increased to 47 million, an increase of 2 million during the past year.

We are wondering whether the growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S. is having an effect. About 34 percent of Hispanics do without health insurance, the highest of any ethnic group.

As our books, The Whole Enchilada and Marketing to American Latinos: A Guide to the In-Culture Approach, Part II explain, many Hispanics are used to self-medicating or having their moms give them over-the-counter drugs. Many drugs that are available only by prescription in the U.S. are available in Mexico without a doctor's order. In addition, a large proportion of the Mexican population lives close enough to the border that they can seek medical and dental care in Mexico. Since few U.S. health insurers will cover health care in Mexico, these residents may feel that health insurance is not useful.

A Los Angeles employer of several Hispanics tells us that given a choice between more wages and health insurance, her employees always prefer a wage hike. These are all people who are legally working in the U.S., but they prefer to go to Mexico for their health care.

It is possible we are in a period of transition where U.S. Hispanics need to learn to trust the U.S. health care system and U.S. healthcare providers need to employ more Spanish speakers in order to give Hispanics the level of comfort they need to use our system. It is also possible that U.S. health insurance companies need to make more of an effort to fashion policies that will meet the needs of Hispanics and then to market those policies more effectively.

Nielsen to Generate National Ratings for Both English -and Spanish Language Television from the Same Panel

A significant example of the corporate acceptance of the Latin influence on American culture is Nielsen Media Research's decision to combine its English and Spanish language television viewing panels. You can find the whole press release at the Nielsen Media Research Web site, but here are some excerpts.

New York, NY, August 27, 2007 – The Nielsen Company announced that beginning today it will produce all national Hispanic ratings through its National People Meter (NPM) panel, the same sample that is used to produce ratings for non-Hispanic networks. This will put national Spanish-language television on a level playing field with English-language television, providing a common ratings number for all national networks.

As a consequence of providing ratings from a single national sample for all television networks regardless of language, Nielsen will retire its separate National Hispanic People Meter (NHPM) panel, which has measured Hispanic households since 1992. This completes a transition that started in late 2005, when a number of Spanish language networks began to use ratings data from the NPM sample.

The growth of Hispanic television in recent years has resulted from the growing market power of the Hispanic population as a whole:

• The number of Hispanic viewers in the U.S. has risen from 22.2 million, or 9% of the total U.S. population, in 1992-93 to 38.9 million, or 14% of the total population in 2005-06.

• Ad spending on Spanish-language network and cable television has grown from approximately $1.8 billion in 2001 to more than $3.05 billion in 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

• In the 1992-1993 television season, there were two national Spanish-language broadcast networks, attracting a combined average primetime audience of 2.4 million Hispanic viewers. In the 2006-2007 television season, there were four national Spanish-language broadcast networks with a combined average primetime audience of 4.1 million Hispanic viewers.

“By providing the marketplace with a single source of television ratings regardless of language, Nielsen will allow the television industry to evaluate both English and Spanish language television and audiences side-by-side,” said Sara Erichson, Executive Vice President, Nielsen Media Research North America. “This step is part of Nielsen’s commitment to continuously improve the quality and accuracy of its measurement and to ensure that our measurements reflect the growing diversity of the entire U.S. population.”

If you are interested in listening to some discussion on this topic, there was a report on NPR - Morning Edition

Media researcher Brad Adgate discusses the change and the growth of the Hispanic television market with Renee Montagne.

Source : NPR - Morning Edition