HispanicBusiness

DALLAS, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Cultura announces the launch of a comprehensive study of the US Hispanic market. Juan Faura, president of Cultura, a Dallas-based ad agency specializing in the US Hispanic market, stated it is the first study of its kind. "There have been extremely thorough and complete research projects addressing the US Hispanic market in the past, but they have not covered the breadth of markets and people that this one will," he stated from his office in Dallas. The project titled Hispanamericanos: The Third Culture began on August 2, 2004, will cover more than 120 cities in 30 states across the US and Mexico, will include Spanish- dominant, bilingual and English-dominant Hispanics between 7 and 95 years old and is expected to take between 6 and 9 months to complete. Greg Knipp, general manager of Cultura believes the results will be invaluable to marketers looking to reach this audience. "The study is intended to provide the most complete picture of the market to date."

According to Faura, in addition to the scope and breadth of the geographic and demographic coverage, the methodology for executing the project will be highly unorthodox. "It really is unlike any project that I am aware of. There are no set quotas for number, age or language preference of respondents. We are also not speaking to them about any category, brand or product in particular. We are starting in Tijuana, Mexico and going across to the state of Maine in the US and we are talking to as many Hispanics along the way as we possibly can about all of those things and more. We plan to cover politics, media and even sexual orientation."

Cesar Cruz, director of Hispanic marketing for Cox Communications believes the information is long overdue. "The Hispanic market will be incredibly valuable in the growth of many US companies, including Fortune 100 companies. It is about time someone went out and talked to the whole market without any specific agenda other than to find out what the makes them tick as people, from a human standpoint." The project will be the catalyst for a book and an edited movie-style report, which will include the best footage from all the interviews and conversations throughout the trip. The book will be a follow up to Faura's "The Whole Enchilada", a how-to primer for companies interested in marketing to Hispanics, initially released in late 2003 and re-released in hardback in August of 2004. Faura would like to share these findings with the industry and will do so through presentation of the video at several venues, possibly during the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies conference in the Spring. "We considered sharing this only with our clients and making it purely proprietary, but then we decided that the most value would come from making everybody's work better. It will help to evolve the overall creative thinking and that will lead to a higher level of creative and ultimately better work from everyone." The project is a long term initiative and Faura has stated he is open to having questions sent in by creatives, account service or strategy. "I can't promise we will ask all of them, but we will definitely try to hit the issues that seem to come up most often." He can be contacted at juan@culturadallas.com . Cultura