March 2, 2008
Expanding Market Reach: Tapping into a Key Demographic
The Latino population in the United States is growing by the hour – Hispanics comprise the largest ethnic minority group in the nation.
The Hispanic population in my home county is about 15 percent of the total population, and nearly 20 percent of the population in the schools is Hispanic. I also have a step mom from Bolivia, so I recognize the need (and potential) for businesses and service providers to reach out to the Latino community.
There is a great organization here in Nashville, Conexión Américas, which strives for the social and economic advancement of Hispanics living in Middle Tennessee. It offers them “information, resources, support networks, and tools needed to address immediate, midterm, and long-range challenges,” as well as helping businesses reach the Latino community.
Former reporter, Liliana Ospina, a Colombian native, started Latino Public Relations, LLC, with offices in Pontiac, Mich. and Bogotá, Colombia, which provide standard public relations services as well as translation services. A blog post in the Oakland Business Review includes an interview with Ms. Ospina.
One of the firm’s goals is to “teach the consumer marketplace that the Hispanic community is diverse and complex.”
We have discussed this in my Spanish class, and I was shocked at how uninformed some of the other students were on the diversity of the people from the Central and South American countries. It is so important to realize that people from Mexico are so different from those in Argentina…or someone from Mexico City, for example, is so different from someone in Oaxaca. Each region has unique social, economic and political histories which affect the cultures.
Personally, I think organizations like Conexión Américas and Latino Public Relations is just what this country needs for the growing diversity. Liliana Ospina has developed a company which is advantageous to a lot of Americans, and I hope more and more practitioners will follow suit. Even if it’s just reaching out more to the Latino population, every business can learn from Ospina’s example.
Raw Relations 