Mobile Phone advertising coming to Latin America

Source: MyScreen Mobile, Inc.
On 5:00 am EST, Tuesday November 24, 2009

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO and TORONTO, ONTARIO and MIAMI, FLORIDA–(Marketwire – 11/24/09) – Attention assignment editors, mobile phone reporters, technology reporters, marketing and advertising reporters, and investment, financial and business reporters:

MyScreen Mobile, Inc. (MyScreen) (PINK SHEETS:MYSL – News)(Frankfurt:WICI – News) and America Movil (NYSE:AMX – News)(BMV: AMX)(NASDAQ:AMOV – News)(LATIBEX: XAMXL) today announced an agreement to launch MyScreen’s first-of-a-kind interactive mobile advertising service across Latin America and the Caribbean beginning in the fourth quarter of 2009. MyScreen’s patent-pending technology platform delivers full-screen advertisements to the mobile phones of opt-in subscribers and provides them with rewards such as free services, special offers and discounts.

Together, MyScreen and America Movil will deliver ads to the mobile network operator’s users who voluntarily subscribe to the service. America Movil has already begun to integrate MyScreen’s platform and initiate plans to roll out the service in the region. Ads for large consumer brands are slated to be among the first to be delivered among America Movil’s users. According to 2009 Juniper Research data, mobile advertising revenues in South America from 2009 to 2013 are projected to be approximately $1.3 billion USD.

“Mobile advertising has tremendous potential, as the penetration and individuality of the cellular phone allows us to reach a significant and highly segmented public. MyScreen’s solution joins other mobile advertising solutions already offered by America Movil,” said Marco Quatorze, director of value-added services for America Movil. “This launch reflects our commitment to stay in the forefront of the mobile communications industry, offering our subscribers and shareholders greater value.”

Maurizio Angelone, chief executive officer of MyScreen, added: “MyScreen is a new mobile advertising channel that offers great potential and will help ensure America Movil’s leadership and recognition in this market. We are proud of our partnership and focused on our collaboration with America Movil to help maximize its mobile advertising business.”

Angelone said MyScreen differs from the other mobile advertising solutions available, as MyScreen’s ads are:

- Full-screen, visually engaging graphics that convey the advertisers’ brand image

- Delivered in a non-shared advertising environment that provides brand exclusivity. MyScreen ads are delivered at the end of every call, creating much better visibility than SMS texts and banner ads. Banner ads are only visible to consumers when they are browsing the Internet.

- Designed to enable consumers to engage directly with the ads using MyScreen’s proprietary “AdValue HotKeys.” MyScreen greatly outperforms Internet CTR’s, which are widely known to average less than 1 percent. During a 2009 commercial trial, MyScreen ads generated click thru rates (CTR’s) that exceeded 20 percent. According to the latest industry data, the average CTR is only 0.1 percent

- Individually targeted to match each subscriber’s self-created demographic and psychographic profiles, making the ads highly relevant to their unique interests and lifestyles

- Incentive-based, with subscribers accumulating reward points for every ad they view on their phones

- Points are redeemed in the form of free and bonus telecom services provided by the operator. Exclusive “made-for-MyScreen” offers, such as free trial products or special promotional pricing, are provided by participating advertisers.

Moreover, MyScreen’s mobile advertising solution is designed to integrate seamlessly without interrupting users’ regular call behaviors. Subscribers choose the type of content and ads they receive from categories such as sports, entertainment, lifestyle and health. Advertisers can use MyScreen’s unique “AdValue HotKeys” to raise brand awareness, launch products and services, promote special offers, generate traffic to retail locations, improve customer loyalty and drive sales.

For marketers, and their companies, moving satisfaction to loyalty is the challenge

Nortel’s Roberto Ricossa says research shows that 65-85 percent of all customers who leave suppliers are satisfied with them.

“So what’s wrong with the picture?,” asked the Field Marketing Vice President for the Canadian company’s Americas operations during the discussion he led at WorldCity’s Marketing Connections event last week. “Is customer satisfaction the end game? You can be satisfied with the service, with the product, but it’s taking it to the next step, to customer loyalty.”

That statistic is made possible, and makes sense, because “the cost of changing is very, very low,” said Olympus Latin America Marketing Director Tito Rodriguez.

Marketing Connections, sponsored by HP and hosted at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, is one of six event series WorldCity hosts for South Florida’s multinational and international business community. The others are Global Connections, the CEO Club, HR Connections, Trade Connections and Government Affairs Connections.

Every other month, Marketing Connections brings together the top marketing officials from the 1,100 multinationals in WorldCity’s Who’s Here database. The topic discussed last week was customer loyalty.

Not only is the cost to change vendors low; it is also expensive for companies. “Every time we lose an agent,” said Western Union’s Juan Pablo Valdes, “we lose 80 percent of their business, no matter what we do.”

“It’s all about creating a positive emotional experience,” said Alejandro Perez, vice president of Business Development at Wilson Learning, Latin America.

Particularly in challenging economic times like now, when there are employee and service cutbacks, keeping customers loyal is challenging. In this crowd of frequent fliers, one area where the attendees said they had noticed cutbacks is at airlines, whether it is charging for luggage, cutting back on snacks or charging for preferred seating.

“It’s not only affecting us” as customers, said Adriana Toledo, who is in charge of loyalty programs for Sol Melia’s Latin America operations. “It’s affecting their employees and that affects their service to us.”

A number of companies spoke about the specific programs they use to keep close to their customers because, as Black & Decker’s Renata Panzarini, said, “problems are happening every single day in every single place.”

Panzarini, whose Latin America operations are in 16 countries, said he is copied on emails of complaint, compliment or question from throughout the region, and receives up to 150 per day. “I read every single email,” he said. “I reply to them, sometimes I call them.”

At Nokia Latin America, marketing people work in a call center once a quarter, listening to the same thing from customers — complaints, compliments and questions. Matt Rothschild, the head of Go To Market for Latin America, believes its effective. “You can hear it in their decisions,” he says of marketing people who have spoken with customers. “ ‘I am doing this because of what a customer told me — or yelled at me.’ “

Toledo, representing Sol Melia, the Spanish hotel operator, recalled the customer obsession of a former employer, the Four Seasons. A particular customer had made it known she liked a specific type of Greek yogurt, and was accustomed to having it while in New York. Turns out, in Palm Beach, it was only available 30 miles from the Four Seasons property there. “I know,” she said. “I had to get it every day.”

At Wendy’s Latin America, the company asks for customer feedback on the back of receipts and on table-top displays with cards, said Guillermo del Solar, marketing manager. The idea is to take them to the internet, where they can make commments — and get rewarded with a free Frosty.

Nortel’s Ricossa explained a program he created at the company, one that tries to move beyond being simply a reward program to be a true loyalty program. Nortel sells largely through distributors in the region, and many of them can sell competing products from Avaya, Siemens and Cisco.

Nortel offers points not only for sales but also for attending sessions to learn about its products, for viewing webinars and otherwise educating themselves on Nortel products and services. The “Click and Win” program started four years ago with 400 members and now has 1,700. The participants are individual sales people.

In an effort to grown the program, Nortel offers the latest in technology in the United States, before it is readily available in Latin America, whether it’s an iPhone or Play Station 3 game console. “And I don’t just mail it to you,” he said. At the next sales meeting, “I ask the manager to hand it to you. I want to make the others jealous.”

For the top 20 producers, there is an all-expenses-paid trip for the employee and spouse to a Latin American destination that the person might not normally visit, whether a Caribbean island or Machu Picchu in Peru.

Technology can be a friend in the endeavor to stay close to customers. Nokia’s Rothschild said he is far less likely to be interested in an airline email that is clearly sent to a massive database but would find it useful to receive one that says, “Hi, Matt. We noticed you fly to Mexico every other week. Could we help by offering a good rate on a rental car?”

When Nokia phone contracts near expiration, a series of emails alert customers to the expiration and offer information about the newest and latest technology that might be suggested by the customer’s current equipment and usage. “The conversion rate is very high,” he said. “The key is understanding who we are talking to.”

Like Nortel, Medtronic and to a lesser extent Chevron market to a distributor or agent, and the end user might be unaware or minimally concerned he is using the product or service. “Think about gas,” Damon Echevarria, an area sales manager for Central America and the Caribbean. “It’s stinky, dirty and you never see it. What it comes down to is location and price. I have end users and I have station owners, which is where I build my relationships.”

“If we don’t talk about service, if we don’t tell them we provide it, they never know it,” said Urs Brunner, director of Operations and Strategic Management with Medtronic Latin America.

In the end, said Nortel’s Ricossa, “It’s not about having a loyalty program. It’s about attitude. It’s about getting it done. The loyalty program is only a vehicle.”

Source: World City Web www.worldcityweb.com

YouTube Gets Univision, but Not Telenovelas

Dispute With Televisa Hampers Spanish-Language Network’s Online Efforts

By Michael Learmonth Published: November 16, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Once, Univision was the most pirated network on YouTube. Now, the leading U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster is going into business with YouTube, but that’s where things get complicated.

‘Un Gancho al Corazón’ Univision announced a deal with YouTube today that will put shows produced by the network on Google’s behemoth video site. The deal includes programs such as the talk show “Cristina,” Univision’s Latin Music Awards and the prime-time reality show “Nuestra Belleza Latina.”

But the deal does not include Univision’s most popular telenovelas, the steamy serial soap operas produced by Grupo Televisa in Mexico that include “Cuidado Con el Angel,” which aired earlier this year, and “Un Gancho al Corazon,” which are the main audience-drivers to the network.

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That’s because Univision is locked in a legal dispute with Televisa, its main programming supplier, which provides about 40% of its programming. One part of that dispute was settled in January, but the issue of who has the right to distribute Televisa programming in the U.S. is still up in the air, hampering Univision in its bid to build its online presence and stopping Televisa from expanding its Mexican media empire in the U.S.

Some background: In 1992, Univision signed a 25-year exclusive U.S. TV rights deal with Televisa, but naturally that deal did not address whether Univision’s distribution rights included anything resembling the internet. Business went sour between the two, and Televisa ended up suing Univision for violating the terms of the original deal by underpaying royalties.

Unsettled issues

While that suit was settled earlier this year, the issue of who has the right to distribute shows on the web in the U.S. wasn’t. A U.S. judge ruled in July that Televisa doesn’t hold the rights but stopped short of granting them to Univision, though Univision has said it hopes to gain those rights soon.

In the meantime, perhaps because of the animus involved, Televisa simply ignored the fact that fans were uploading its telenovelas to YouTube, where they were accumulating hundreds of millions of views. Cumulatively, Univision clips had far more views than Fox, ABC, NBC or CBS on YouTube, according to web analytics firm TubeMogul. A new telenovela, “Sortilegio,” which premiered Oct. 6, has already garnered nearly 70 million views on YouTube.

Because it has no control over whether Televisa policed YouTube for pirated copies, Univision has little control over which Televisa shows end up there. Ironically, that has given Univision a sense of whether their presence online hurts ratings: not much. Univision is one of few broadcast networks increasing its audience year-over-year, whether its shows are on YouTube or not.

Unlike some of its network brethren, Univision is putting up full episodes of the shows it has the right to do so on YouTube.

In a conference call, Kevin Conroy, president of Univision Interactive Media, didn’t address whether Univision would put Televisa shows on YouTube even if it could. “We’d very much like to be able to offer Televisa’s content as video,” Mr. Conroy told Ad Age in September. “We’re not in a position to do it quite yet.”

Televisa has become more aggressive about policing YouTube over the past year, and now it distributes its shows on its own site, Esmas.com, which is blocked for U.S. viewers. The number of pirated clips of Televisa-produced Univision shows are down 53% since February, according to TubeMogul.

Volkswagen Stars in a Brazilian Cars-for-Clunkers Game

Contestants Hope to Leave ‘Zero Bala’ With VW Fox

By Laurel Wentz Published: November 16, 2009

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — In a new Brazilian twist on the TV game-show format, Volkswagen is the star and contestants drive their old clunkers into the TV studio, hoping to leave the show behind the wheel of a zippy VW Fox.

“Zero Bala,” named for a Portuguese slang term that means “brand new,” debuted Nov. 15 on Brazil’s TV Bandeirantes. The show was put together by Endemol, which creates entertainment programming formats, and VW’s Brazilian agencies Almap BBDO and Bullet, a leading promotions shop.

To be eligible, cars have to be both old and have an intriguing history, said Fernando Figueiredo, president of Bullet. “Like the owner has had the car since he got married and now has three grandchildren,” he said.

Keeping Volkswagen involved in every step, contestants can sign up for the show at VW dealerships, or online at TV

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Bandeirantes’ siteband.com.br/zerobala.

And anyone can play along and win small VW-related prizes like T-shirts and stickers by answering the questions posed on the show from their

mobile phones.

The car owners chosen as “Zero Bala” contestants line up in their clunkers outside the studio and drive in one at a time to go through a barrage of multiple-choice general knowledge questions at each of six stoplights as the show airs live.

Only occupants of the car can answer questions, and contestants are free to cram as many people into their car as they want. That’s part of the fun, Mr. Figueiredo said.

If a car makes it through the final stoplight, the occupants hop out and the car continues up a ramp to perch on a giant roulette wheel. The clunker’s owner spins the wheel, and has about a 25% chance of winning a new Fox, an urban car made by Volkswagen, Brazil’s No. 2 auto maker after Fiat.

As soon as the first car exits the roulette wheel, the next clunker drives into the studio. Usually three or four cars will participate each week.

“Volkswagen’s intention is that one person per show wins a new car,”Mr. Figueirdo said.

The hour-long program, airing live on Sunday afternoons for an initial three months, is co-hosted by a model, Daniela Cicarelli, and a popular TV presenter, Otavio Mesquita.

Endemol has sold the new-car-for-a-clunker format as a show called “Go” in several other countries, including Argentina, but Bullet’s innovation is putting Volkswagen at the center of the program rather than selling multiple sponsorships to different advertisers.

“We started a content division this year, but instead of creating an idea from scratch and spending a lot of money, we’ve taken an existing idea and adapted and packaged it,” Mr. Figueiredo said.

His agency was acquired by Interpublic Group of Cos. in 2000, but bought itself back in 2006 to avoid losing its creative focus, he said.

One wildly successful Bullet creative idea was the iPod Popsicle, a re-invention of Unilever’s tired summer ice cream bar promotion that had featured prize-winning Popsicle sticks for 20 years. Bullet creatives noticed while reading their iPod instruction manuals that an iPod can operate at temperatures below freezing. It dawned on them that they could put a prize — an iPod Shuffle — inside the Popsicle. After freezing their own iPods repeatedly as a test, they constructed a fake ice cream bar case that, with an iPod inside, was exactly the same size, weight, color and texture as ice cream maker Kibon’s Fruttare Popsicle.

In the summer of 2008, 10,000 iPods went into freezer cases all over Brazil disguised as Fruttare bars. Sales rose 31%, Mr. Figueiredo said, and massive publicity ranged from a story in Gizmodo to countless blog posts. Bloggers were particularly interested in figuring out ways to detect which Popsicle were really iPod prizes, suggesting in their posts everything from attacking the freezer case with a metal detector to sticking pins in the Popsicle.

Latin America is the region with the most online searches on a per searcher basis

By Marcelo Castro – MarketWise360

According to the latest Comscore qSearch report, Latin Americans are the group with the most online searches per searcher:

The report also marks the continuos  growth of online searches worldwide. A whopping 41% growth in the last year alone:

How to Succeed in Word of Mouth Marketing. The Experts Speak. By Annabel Beyra, APR

I had the privilege of attending this year’s PRSA International Conference in San Diego and thought I’d share a few tips of the trade from the experts in word of mouth marketing.

Geno Church, word of mouth inspiration officer for Brains on Fire helped us reflect on the idea that 90% of word of mouth still happens off-line, not on-line. Here’s the breakdown 75% is face to face, 7.5% is email and texting, 15% is voice to voice and only 2.5% is social media.

He says before embarking on any campaign we must first learn about our customer’s motivations. In other words, what motivates them to participate and share. Once we gain a deeper understanding, we should consider developing “Movements” rather than campaigns. Why movements? Because movements are sustainable, while campaigns are finite.  Movements inspire participation and enthusiasm and create brand evangelists. Here are a few lessons Geno shared with the group:

1.)    Movements are built by passion, not by the product, but what it allows you to do. They should be led by the best storytellers and it’s our job to identify these individuals that will help propel our brands.

2.)    Movements begin with the first conversation. The idea is to create a natural contagion so that the conversation continues.

3.) Two key elements in movements: They are inspirational and provoke leadership. We must have something remarkable to “amplify.”

4.)    Movements have a barrier to entry.

5.) Movements empower people with knowledge.

6.) When creating a movement, build it like it has to live forever.

7.) Build it like you’re going to run out of money tomorrow.

8.) Everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

9.) Movements have the ability to create “rock stars.”

10.) Movements get results.

When creating a movement, Geno says it should enable an experience or support a cause and the ethos of the brand should be at its core.

Following are a few other pearls of wisdom that stood out for me that require no explanation:

• We must have something remarkable to amplify. Use creativity, heart and drama.
• Get innovative in content and messages
• Leverage technology in the delivery of messages to feed buzz, provoke conversations and engagement.
• Harness influencers to create contagion. There’s power in a few – the idea of narrowcasting, hypertargeting).
• Work holistically and behave ethically

And finally, when developing a “movement,” remember this:

“Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” Robert Stephens, founder, Geek Squad

CMO Council Inaugurates New Latin American Advisory Board at Regional Gathering of Sales and Marketing Leaders

by Jessica Choi – CMO Council

SAN JUAN, PR — 11/11/09 — The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council — a global group of 5,000 senior executives controlling more than $125 billion in annual marketing spend — is expanding its reach and presence in Latin America with a new advisory board and assessment of marketing credibility and effectiveness in the region. The regional group will draw senior marketer representation from some 27 predominantly Spanish, French and Portuguese-speaking countries with a total population of over 569 million.

The first meeting of the Latin American Advisory Board was hosted by the Sales & Marketing Executives Association of Puerto Rico at their annual conference held at the Wyndham Rio Mar Beach Resort from October 29 to November 1, 2009. CMO Council Advisory Board members include senior marketing decision makers from AlphaGraphics, HP, Philips, Sao Paulo Tourism, Sodexho, Coty, 1First Bank, South American Restaurants Corp., UBS Financial Services, UNO Radio Group, T-Mobile, Goodyear, Sullair Argentina, Nexxo Financial, and Deloitte.

“It’s important that Latin America has a more influential and prominent voice in global marketing circles as our regional economies pick up and global sporting events, such as the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, focus international media attention on our major tourism, commerce and cultural centers,” noted Milton Longobardi, director of marketing and sales at Brazil’s Sao Paulo Tourism, which attracts more than 11 million visitors annually. “The CMO Council will provide us all with a forum to exchange views, share global best practices, and network with senior marketing executives worldwide,” added Longobardi, who has held corporate marketing positions at Nextel, Citibank, Gillette, Bosch and AIG.

Commenting on a new partnership between the CMO Council and The Association of Sales and Marketing Executives of Puerto Rico, SME president Olga E. Rivera Velazco pointed to high levels of marketing innovation and creativity in experiential grassroots engagement and merchandising in Latin American countries.

“There is a strong desire for professional development among marketers and we also have a high incidence of post-graduate education and international experience among regional executives,” said Velazco. “Latins love shopping and retail stores in Puerto Rico generate very high levels of sales compared to their retail chain counterparts in North America,” she noted. “In Puerto Rico, there is also very dense concentration of print and broadcast media, and broad adoption of mobile communications and increasing broadband connectivity. This makes it an ideal test market for new Latin American products and services,” Velazco added.

CMO Council advisory board member, Eva M. Frontera, a faculty advisor and lecturer at the University of Phoenix, Puerto Rico campus, as well as a corporate marketer with extensive experience in the insurance, banking and health care sectors, has been an active advocate and leader in the formation of the CMO Council’s Latin America advisory board. “We have much to contribute and much to learn,” said Frontera, who was named one of the Top 40 Under 40 Young Professionals in Puerto Rico by the Caribbean Business newspaper. “The CMO Council has become a well-respected knowledge transfer agent and a strong advocate of redefining global marketing practices relative to creating greater business value and performance.”

The CMO Council will be conducting a benchmark Rate the State of Marketing in Latin America audit to gain insights and views from senior managers at regional companies. It has already conducted similar surveys in Africa and the Middle East.

About the CMO Council

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council’s 5,000 members control more than $125 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 12,000 global executives across 90 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council’s strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Brand Management Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). www.cmocouncil.org

Gen Y Holds Tight to E-Mail and Texting – eMarketer

Newspapers may be reporting on the demise of e-mail, and some research indicates that young people are turning more toward social networking than more traditional online communication, but college stu

via Gen Y Holds Tight to E-Mail and Texting – eMarketer.

Latin American Women Entrepreneurs Get Business Development Help

(Media-Newswire.com) – Washington — An October 7–9 U.S. Department of State-sponsored conference in Washington to help entrepreneurs from the Western Hemisphere improve their business opportunities was unique: All the entrepreneurs were women.

Entrepreneur Catalina Sanchez Jimenez of Mexico told America.gov: “Now I know there are no boundaries, that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. I want to continue helping my townspeople so they don’t have to migrate.”

The conference was part of the Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas initiative. Launched in September 2008, Pathways to Prosperity is designed to help partner governments extend the benefits of free trade throughout their societies. To achieve this, Pathways tailors its programs.

At the multilateral level, they are designed to provide a forum for partner governments to share best practices. At the grass-roots level, Pathways programs enable business owners to take full advantage of the economic benefits of free trade by learning about trade opportunities, labor and environmental group concerns, trade agreement rules and ways to compete for governmental projects and contracts.

In El Salvador in May, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the expansion of Pathway’s objectives to include the promotion of women’s businesses. “I hope we can supply women entrepreneurs with mentors, training and other tools for success,” Clinton said. The Washington conference, in supporting Clinton’s goal, paired rising entrepreneurs from the Western Hemisphere with experienced business women, who serve as their mentors.

Some of the women selected by Pathways to Prosperity to attend the conference have faced poverty, illiteracy and discrimination. All have overcome economic and gender-based challenges, and, through their businesses, have contributed to their communities.

Catalina Sanchez Jimenez converted a home-based business, making preserves from the nopal cactus, into a full-fledged enterprise. MENA ( Mujeres Envasadoras de Nopal de Ayoquezco ) grows, processes and produces preserved organic nopal in a variety of forms. With financial assistance from the Mexican federal government and technical assistance from the nonprofit Fundación para la Productividad en el Campo A.C. ( FUPROCA ), Sanchez Jimenez and some of the women in her town organized and built a plant that now processes and produces U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified organic nopal preserves from their own harvest for distribution in Mexico and the United States. The processing plant also produces tortillas and organic chocolate.

“I never thought that the project I was starting, the dream I once had, was going to become true, and so fast,” she told America.gov.

Entrepreneur with clothing designed in PeruNoelia de Leon, from Costa Rica, started baking bread with two friends in a previously broken oven she repaired. De Leon taught herself about nutrition. Today, she owns the brand Koenig, a line of specialty breads. “In Costa Rica, 25 years ago when I started, no one knew about adding the healing power of grains and plants to foods like bread. We changed the nutritional culture in Costa Rica with our products,” de Leon told America.gov.

Selling their products outside their local markets is a constant challenge. During the conference the women shared their experiences in marketing and managing a business, and talked about their successes and failures. The more experienced entrepreneurs — businesswomen chosen from North and South America who have had success in U.S. and Latin American markets — provided information and tools to those now entering the worldwide market.

ON FIFTH AVENUE

Jessica Rodriguez from Peru employs 700 indigenous women artisans who craft rich textiles out of organic cotton, soy fiber, alpaca and wool that they formerly sold only in local markets. For her brand of textiles, Art Atlas, Rodriguez convinced these women to undertake new designs and create useful garments for women everywhere. “I told them that if we create this new line, our products could be sold on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and when the American brand Eileen Fisher adopted our line and I saw it displayed in the store windows on Fifth Avenue, I could not believe it! I took photos and went back to these women and told them, ‘See? We did it! We are on Fifth Avenue!’”

Environmental protection and preservation of cultural traditions are also important for these entrepreneurs in promoting their countries’ plants, natural fibers and animal byproducts, as well as preserving traditional crafts and native craftsmanship. These ideas are at the core of some of these successful businesses in Latin America.

Matilde Carrillo de Palomo from El Salvador uses organic herbs in a line of aromatherapy and toiletry products. Her brand, Shuchil, includes soaps, oils, and lotions that are sold in El Salvador and are U.S. Department of Agriculture-certified for sale in the United States.

“We care about job creation; we care about the integrity of our flora and fauna. … I am committed to continuing to work hard and sharing all that I have learned here with other women in my country, so they can implement this concept as well,” she said.

The end of the conference in Washington is not the end of the initiative. The conference provided ideas for marketing and financing and established a broad network to link entrepreneurs with other businesswomen for mentoring in the coming year. Two Pathways-sponsored special envoys from the United States addressed the conference and will travel to the region during the year to encourage women’s economic growth.

Pathways envoy Beth Brooke, vice chairwoman of public policy, sustainability and stakeholder engagement at Ernst & Young, a global business services company, told America.gov that during the conference “no one was in the hallways! There was connected learning from the mentors to their mentees … and the bonding that took place between the women gave opportunities for incredible learning.”

Envoy Nell Merlino, founder and president of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, a nonprofit business resources and community support organization for women entrepreneurs, told America.gov that “the energy and information that flowed from these women entrepreneurs was inspirational. Women talked about being leaders in the community, not in isolation. … You are not alone. You can’t do it by yourself. You need help.”

During the coming year, mentors will travel in Latin America to visit the new entrepreneurs and work with them to implement ideas they shared during their stay in the United States.

WPP CEO Offers Outlook on Advertising’s Future in Latin America

By Anna Maria Virzi, ClickZ, Nov 4, 2009

WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell identified three areas where the company is placing its bets for growth in coming years: a geographic shift in power, the rise in new media, and an increased focus on marketing information and insights.

“There’s a shift in power, which I still don’t think we fully understand here standing in New York, from the West to the East — and modify that to the South,” said Sorrell, keynote speaker at ad:tech New York, referring to China and India in the East and Latin America in the South. “Every single client we deal with is focusing on these parts of the world for growth.”

During the first six months of 2009, 35.8 percent of WPP’s revenue came from North America, 38.1 percent from the U.K. and Western Europe, and 26.1 percent from the rest of the world, according to the company’s earnings report published in August.

Sorrell said he also expects online marketing budgets to catch up with consumer use of new media. Currently, clients spend about 12 percent of their marketing budgets online, he said. Yet consumers spend 20 to 28 percent of their time online.

Why isn’t more money invested in online marketing? It’s generational, he said. “People who run media agencies tend to be an older vintage. They tend to be resistant to change,” he said. Executives approaching retirement age don’t want to spend the last three or four years of their careers dealing with massive change, he said.

A third area of growth, he predicted, involves marketing information services. With that in mind, WPP last year acquired TNS.

With an estimated $14 billion in annual revenue, Sorrell broke out WPP’s revenue sources as follows: $4 billion from marketing information services; $3.5 billion from interactive marketing; and about $2 billion from its media planning and buying services.

Sorrell offered contrasting thoughts on mobile advertising’s potential. While discussing the opportunities in Asia, he pointed to China Mobile, which has more than 500 million subscribers. (In contrast, there were about 270 million subscribers in the United States, according to IE Market Research Corp.)

At another point during his keynote, he said one of the biggest disappointments in online advertising has been the slow adoption of mobile advertising in Western Europe. He expects that could change, though, as more consumers begin to use smart phones.