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Welcome.
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This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others.
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Now here is your host, peter Woolfolk.
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Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world.
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Now, apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide and recently Feedspot listed this podcast as number 13 on its top 70 best public relations podcasts in the United States.
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So thank you to all of our guests and listeners for your continued support and if you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review.
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Now a question for the audience Are you including outreach to the Hispanic community in your upcoming events or programs?
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Does your firm or organization have the skills to effectively engage the Hispanic media?
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Now, how does your firm accurately turn an English-speaking campaign into a culturally adjusted Spanish-speaking campaign?
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Well, my guest today notes the importance of companies and public relations agencies incorporating Hispanic-oriented campaigns to the work they already do.
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Public relations agencies should not have to wait for clients to come ask them to include these campaigns.
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They should already be offering it to companies.
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When they don't, they are losing out on 65 million potential clients or buyers.
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Today we will cover what works, what doesn't work and what are the benefits for agencies and companies who incorporate Hispanics into their campaigns.
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So joining me today, from Jersey City, new Jersey, is Susana Mendoza.
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She is a publicist specializing in Hispanic media outreach.
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She helps companies and public relations agencies deal with Spanish-speaking media to reach millions of Latinos in the United States.
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So, susan, welcome to the podcast.
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Hi Peter, thank you so much for having me.
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I appreciate it.
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Well, look, why don't we begin by having you give us sort of an overview of the benefits of having, or involving Hispanic population in local and state and national events?
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and national events.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I always advise any PR company, or also a company where I'm consulting, to definitely include this huge segment of population that won't stop growing.
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Right now, latinos make up about, I think it's 65 million people in the population.
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I think it's like 19% of the overall population.
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I mean, this is something that a lot of people know, but by 2050, they will reach 100 million Hispanics in the US.
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That is a very big figure.
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So involving them in any event not only any event on a local or national level we're talking also about PR campaigns that can deal politics definitely involve Latinas, because they're a big you know, they have huge voting demographics as well but also, for example, campaigns that deal with health, also education.
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They're great to have that.
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I mean, hispanics are eager to also be part of this kind of campaign.
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So it's usually a win-win.
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It's a win for the PR agency because it's a benefit that they're offering for their client.
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Obviously, it's also an economic plus because you're adding an extra to that campaign.
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It's also a great win for the client because the client can reach more people for their campaign.
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But they can also create credibility amongst that population so that next campaign it's even easier to talk directly to Hispanics, because they've already created this in the community.
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And obviously for the people targeted by this campaign, because Latinos also want to be part of this campaign.
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They don't want to be part of this campaign.
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They don't want to be, you know, like forgotten.
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They definitely want to be part of any campaign and any political, whether it be political, whether it be educational.
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Yeah, they definitely want to be part of the conversation and obviously we're not talking about, you know, the economic return on investment that this can be as well If you want to sell a product, a service.
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Let's not forget, like what I said before, that they're almost 20% of the population.
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So I don't I sometimes don't understand why PR agencies are not already incorporating this into any offering that they make their clients.
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Clients are free to say no, but I think that once PR agencies can help them understand all these benefits that including Hispanic-oriented PR campaigns can have on top of their English-speaking campaigns, I think a lot of clients would actually want to include them.
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Let me just add this, because you're talking about the economic impact.
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I just happened to look this up, since I knew you were coming on board, and it basically says this the annual US Latino GDP, or total economic output, or basically how much money they spend of Latinos in the United States, hit a record high reaching $4.1 trillion, and this was in 2023.
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And that was up from $3.7 trillion in 2022.
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So obviously 2024 has not.
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They haven't added up all the numbers yet, but when we talk about money in the trillions, that says to me that you need to pay attention to this particular group.
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Yeah, absolutely I agree.
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I think it's a mistake sometimes that people tend to think that you know a percentage of Hispanics that they're not worth targeting, depending on the product, because they may not have the economic wherewithal for that said product or service.
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But in many cases it's not true.
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Hispanics are a growing demographic, but also their spending capability is also growing.
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Hispanics are a growing demographic.
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That also their spending capability is also growing.
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Hispanics are not stagnant.
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They're not, you know, a demographic that just stays in one place or, in general, hispanics are entrepreneurs.
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There are people who really want to, you know, advance in life and in many cases you know their economic capability goes along with that let me just add to that, because I'm here in Nashville, one of the things I was able to do I met some people and I was invited to, and did join, the first chamber of commerce here because they wanted to obviously begin to let folks know and have Hispanics get involved in some businesses and other things going on in the city and they asked me to give them a hand at that.
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Now let me also say that from some of the people that I met, we had people that were making, had running companies, that Hispanic folks that were running companies that were bringing in a million dollars a year in earnings from their particular company.
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So there's a wide range of people involved in this.
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When Obama was president, he came to Nashville and where did he choose to go?
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To make some presentations To the Hispanic Civic Center here.
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So that says to me that Hispanics have a lot of horsepower in a lot of different cities and people need to make sure that they don't take their eye off of that ball.
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Absolutely, that's true.
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I mean there's significant growth as well.
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The US Latino GDP has grown faster than the GDP of any of the world's top 10 economies, including China and India.
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So definitely companies should include Latinos in I'm not going to say all of their campaigns, but definitely worry something relevant and that the company thinks that they can have some relevance.
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So I think honestly, I think any campaign should incorporate Spanish-speaking campaign geared towards Latino.
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I can't think of anything that wouldn't you know where Latinos would also.
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Well, why don't we start with something like this and say, okay, fine, the company has decided they're going to put on a particular campaign and let's, for sake of our conversation, talk about, maybe some health campaign?
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I was involved in one of those.
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What are you going to suggest, and how would you get involved, to have the organization that's doing it begin its outreach to the Hispanic community to engage them to help support this health campaign that's coming forward?
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Yeah, I mean that's going to depend on a series of factors and, like with any campaign, I would have to look at specifically is it a local campaign?
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Is it a national campaign?
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You know what kind?
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Also, because amongst, even amongst the Hispanics, there's also some differences, and this is something that I also talk about a lot, that sometimes the mistake that PR companies make when dealing with.
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Hispanics is thinking that Hispanics are a monolith, that all Hispanics think the same way, that all Hispanics vote the same way.
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It, no, no, it's not true.
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Right, definitely.
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So this is something that I had to correct, you know, quite a few times, because different Hispanics have certain moral values, or some are more religious, some are more liberal, so you cannot reach all of them using the exact same strategy.
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So that's something I would have to look at.
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So, for example, latinos in LA are sometimes not the same as Latinos in Miami, which are predominantly Cuban, at least for now.
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So you know, depending on your demographics, that's how you tweak your campaign as well, if it's tweakable.
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So, after that, whether it's local, national, I would also say what is the budget for this?
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Do we have budget for events?
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Events are great in any PR campaign, in any language, but when it comes to Hispanic demographics, it's always something I think it creates.
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It's more conducive to a more successful PR campaign, because it's very valued in the Hispanic community If you do, for example, an event that helps the community.
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So, for example, if you're doing a health campaign, a vaccine, for example, so you want to reach out to Hispanics in a certain city, so it's so much more valuable to reach out to Hispanics in a certain city.
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So it's so much more valuable if you do an event where you're teaching about, let's say, healthy eating, you're giving away also fruits or vegetables, you're teaching how to cook in a healthy way and people can use the vegetables and you're giving them for free.
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So it's kind of something that's built around the community and then you're also letting them know about a certain vaccine or a certain product or service for their health.
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But you're involving the community, you're giving something back and this way you're going to have a lot more interest also from local media and I would say that in general for Hispanics that's also very important.
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You're going to get a lot of people attending the event and you're also going to get great coverage in general because, like I said it's very valued.
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Now we don't always have the budget to do an event in every city or be able to organize something of that magnitude.
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So then I think it works really well.
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For example, you have to take into consideration that when it comes to Hispanic newsrooms, you know we all know that journalism is not going through the best time, so when it deals with Spanish-speaking newsrooms, it's even worse.
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We're talking about newsrooms of two people.
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Sometimes it's just one person writing the entire online newspaper, and if it's TV, I've seen TV stations with two producers, one news writer and one cameraman.
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So you know you have to also keep this in mind that they're completely depleted.
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So it works really well if you create a thoughtful news article that they can use and they can put up on their website, because they don't have the time and a lot of times they don't have the resources to actually do an interview or go cover an event.
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So if you already facilitate this for Spanish-speaking online media, you're going to get a lot of coverage.
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And when we're dealing with TV stations, it's a little bit of the same.
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If you can provide them with the footage, something that's canned, chances are that if they can't cover it, they may air it.
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It's never a given, obviously, but just make things easier.
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Make their lives easier in that regard.
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And when I say make their lives easier, it's not because they don't want to cover it, it's because a lot of times they don't have the resources right now.
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It worries me a lot because, obviously, as an ex-journalist and also because I am currently a publicist, empty newsrooms they're always bad news, not only for me as a publicist but, for everyone, yes, in any language.
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So this is something also that we should take into account, because I also had, you know, different campaigns that didn't understand this.
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English-speaking newsrooms are also being depleted, but in Spanish it's almost a tragedy.
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So what I usually say is if you can make their lives easier, chances are that they're going to publish this if you send it to them.
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Oh, and also one great thing that you have with Spanish-speaking media not only online, also TV, radio is that you can call the reporters directly if you have their numbers.
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This is something that I really, really like when I work with Spanish-speaking journalists.
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You can send them a WhatsApp or a text message or call them up, and nobody gets upset.
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Now, I understand journalists are very busy and obviously they don't want publicists calling them all day long, but with Hispanics it's just a different culture, so people don't mind as much if you call them, and once you have a reporter or a producer on the phone, chances that they will publish your story are bigger.
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That's a given than just sending an email.
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So these are things that I would tell people who are looking to incorporate a Spanish-speaking PR campaign to take into account.
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Let me add to that, because I was involved in something similar to what you were saying, that because I was involved in something similar to what you were saying.
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A couple of years ago, Nashville opened up its brand new convention center and the mayor wanted to have some way of saying to the city we appreciate what you did by supporting this.
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So when we were asked to get involved in coming up with something, I split it out into two things, you know, for the city and for the Hispanic community.
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Well, for the Hispanic community, what we wanted to do, because there was going to be food served I went to the same civic center where Obama had gone, the Casa Azafran, which is the heavy hitter here, and asked them to be involved and we, you know, brought them on as a partner.
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The biggest thing we had to decide is what were we going to serve?
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Because, as you said, there are a lot of different nationalities of Hispanics.
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So we let them decide what the food should be and how it's going to be cooked, and so forth and so on, and we had the event at the Hispanic Civic Center of Casa Azufran.
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The other thing that they also let us know is that we're going to have it.
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The best time to have it is on a Saturday.
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Why is that?
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Because Hispanics like to bring their families and do things in a family way, that way the kids could participate.
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So I mean, we're learning these things, you know, as we go along.
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We did that.
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The Hispanic organization reached out to the Hispanic radio station.
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They came and broadcast live from the event.
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So it's all these kinds of things that you learn by involving the people that you're trying to reach, involving them at the planning stage of it.
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It goes exceedingly well.
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The mayor was happy with it.
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We had city council people up there.
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We've got photos of the families with balloons.
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We had folks there to, you know, deal with the kids to make balloons and do other things.
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So that went exceedingly well.
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So that's why I said to you early on I'm fully on board with how to and the importance of engaging and being engaged with the Hispanic community, because they have an awful, awful lot to offer.
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There's no question about it.
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Yeah, no, absolutely I think that.
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Yeah, what we were talking about before, like when dealing with PR campaigns that want to bring on board Hispanics, definitely family plays a huge part.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely huge.
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If you involve the family in whatever it is that you're doing, it can increase attendance to your event exponentially.
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But regarding what you were saying about the Saturdays, I do agree with you that because of the depletion of the newsroom, we had great attendance but media couldn't go and cover them because they had no journalists on the weekend.
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Go figure.
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Well, yeah, I changed my mind on that.
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I used to think that Saturdays were the best day for events also, but I think Saturday afternoons slash evenings are the best now, I'm sorry, go on.
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It's such a shame.
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Yeah, so many newsrooms just don't.
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They just slashed their weekend crew.
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Well, on this particular event, what had happened?
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Because we did involve the radio stations and they basically let the community know that it was going going to happen.
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And uh, but it was the advisor of the hispanic uh civic center that said you know, that way you can get the entire families there if you have it on a saturday, so that would be the pre, yeah, the pre, so that people know that it's going to happen right and then the actual coverage of the event right and they said one of the stations was there and they broadcast live and interviewed and all those other sort of things and it was basically almost standing room.
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Only we actually had to hire a traffic director because so much traffic came in.
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Wow, it sounds like it wasn't like a smash.
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Oh, there is no question about how successful that thing was, because one of the things that I've learned in the public relations business, and particularly in planning, and that is any and everybody that has anything to do with the event has to be at the table, because it does not work when you say, well, fine, we'll do A, b, c and D.
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Oh, and, by the way, write this down and give this to Sam and tell him here's his part.
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Well, wait a minute, sam will read it.
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And it's ongoing.
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He said wait a minute.
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And you call him up and say okay, sam, I'm coming to your party.
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He said well, wait a minute, this doesn't work because the A, b, c and D is wrong.
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Well, now the thing has to stop.
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So the point simply is any and everybody who's involved in any planning, they all need to sit at the same table at the same time.
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Definitely Planning events.
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Oh my God, time definitely planning events.
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Oh my god, it's so difficult, so many moving parts.
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Well, well, you know the other thing, that part of my background is that I uh, I worked in the uh, I handled communications for uh bill clinton up in the state of delaware when he was running a campaign up there.
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And, believe me, one of the things in in terms of being accurate and precise in terms of things is because both the First Lady and the Vice President came up and you've got to deal with the Secret Service as well as the advance team and there's so much detail involved in things up there that that has always carried through with me about making sure I have answers to as many details as possible, because it pays and it pays handsomely to know what it is you're doing and it also avoids mistakes.
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Yeah, no, of course.
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So what are some of the other things that we may not have touched on in terms of, you know, outreach and having a Hispanic population involved in civic events or reaching out to the media?
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Well, other than to keep in mind, you know, the current state of the news media in Spanish.
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I would say that another thing that has worked really well for me has been when we're talking about events and being on the ground, which works really, really well with Hispanics.
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Another winning strategy when doing this kind of event is to partner up with a local organization.
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So let's say that you're in LA and you want to do an event about I don't know car seats.
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You know your client sells car seats for cars for babies, so you can partner with a local health maternity, you know, health, something like that, or like babies, health like Hispanic, that helps young mothers, young families, and then they can do a small workshop about how to put on a car seat.
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And something this simple can really help you get a lot of attention, because people understand the necessity, the need to learn more about something so important.
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And if you partner with a local organization, it also gives you even more credibility in the Hispanic community, in the community that you want to target, because they already know them.
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And also this organization can also help you, you know, by letting you know the specifics of that community.
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Maybe they're doing something that won't appeal to that particular community or they know something that you don't know that can help you.
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You know, get even more people to the event, get even more media.
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So I would always say, as much as possible, always partner with local organizations, because you know they will help you so much.
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Reach to a wider audience, for people to go to the event.
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And also, you know it won't be seen as some kind of publicity stunt by news media, seeing as some kind of publicity stunt by news media.
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You know, let me just join again because, again, I support exactly what you said, because we had a contract here with the health department and one of the things that the health department wanted to do was have this massive outreach to the entire city of Nashville about the various programs that were available, and part of our job was to produce a video of the head of that, and it would talk about the various and sundry programs.
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Well, we did, and in terms of producing that video, one of the places that we stopped was one of the health service centers that also catered to Hispanics and we had a Hispanic woman to speak.
00:23:15.807 --> 00:23:18.564
She spoke in English, but she was Hispanic.
00:23:18.564 --> 00:23:42.867
What happened was, after the video was produced, we also then went back and had the entire audio part of it, the verbiage part of it, what people were saying written in Spanish and crawled along the bottom of the screen, so that way they could take it into the Hispanic community and everybody would fully understand what was being said and how to take advantage of the various and sundry benefits.
00:23:42.867 --> 00:23:50.346
So I certainly agree with you Whoever's involved in the project needs to be involved in the planning of that project.
00:23:51.017 --> 00:23:52.001
Yeah, absolutely.
00:23:52.001 --> 00:24:00.338
I would also advise not only PR agencies but also companies who want to do, who want to reach out what Hispanics need.
00:24:00.338 --> 00:24:19.210
You need to understand what the media that you want.
00:24:19.210 --> 00:24:21.310
You know you want media to cover your press release.
00:24:21.310 --> 00:24:28.243
You want media to talk about your company, about your product, but they're not going to do it unless you are appealing to their audience.
00:24:28.364 --> 00:24:28.625
Right.
00:24:29.727 --> 00:24:35.016
Exactly, and to do that you need to understand what their audience wants, like.
00:24:35.016 --> 00:24:36.181
What do they need?
00:24:36.181 --> 00:24:37.638
What would they like?
00:24:37.638 --> 00:24:39.545
So you know, that's not.
00:24:39.545 --> 00:24:42.994
It sounds easy, but it's not well, yeah, I agree with.
00:24:43.316 --> 00:24:45.560
I've been down that road a number of times.
00:24:45.801 --> 00:24:48.856
Uh, you know one of the things that, matter of fact, I came up with the idea.
00:24:48.856 --> 00:24:59.002
This was way back in 2010, when we had the uh, the census coming down the pike and I was still part of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and what I suggested is to the Chamber of Commerce.
00:24:59.002 --> 00:25:14.204
So why don't we, the Hispanic Chamber I shouldn't say we, but the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce put on some information that people can use as to how the city can benefit, or Hispanics can benefit, from this information?
00:25:14.204 --> 00:25:35.647
So we decided on things like health, education and business, and we had Hispanic representatives from local hospitals, from businesses and so forth to talk about the things that we can do with information and how it can be done, and one of the leaders of that we found a Hispanic woman who was headed up one of the departments at Vanderbilt University to be a speaker.
00:25:35.647 --> 00:25:38.803
That went over exceptionally well.
00:25:38.803 --> 00:25:44.064
As a matter of fact, we got national coverage on that, just bringing the people in who know how to.
00:25:44.694 --> 00:25:54.994
Oh and sorry, the guy who was the keynote speaker I forget, he was the associate director of I forget the name of the Hispanic center up in Princeton, new Jersey.
00:25:54.994 --> 00:25:55.603
I forget the name of it right now.
00:25:55.603 --> 00:25:56.723
Up in Princeton, new Jersey.
00:25:56.723 --> 00:26:00.965
I forget the name of it right now but because they provide so much information, it'll come to me.
00:26:00.965 --> 00:26:08.167
But he was the keynote speaker and we wound up getting national coverage on that and great participation in the event.
00:26:09.336 --> 00:26:22.721
Also, honestly, you were asking me before other things that I would suggest, and it may come as a bit of a shock, but I've done PR campaigns in Spanish where they didn't have a Spanish spokesperson.
00:26:23.242 --> 00:26:25.268
Oh, no, oh no, yes.
00:26:26.776 --> 00:26:31.247
So you know it was like well, how do you want me to do this?
00:26:31.247 --> 00:26:37.028
Because, yeah, they usually don't interview people in English, especially in TV stations.
00:26:37.028 --> 00:26:48.126
It would have to be something of such a magnitude that they wouldn't mind interviewing some someone in English, but it has to be someone in Spanish, if not, you don't really have anything.
00:26:48.126 --> 00:26:55.458
You don't have someone to go and tell the story, because they're not going to want to cover someone in English, because that's the whole deal.
00:26:55.458 --> 00:26:57.821
They're, you know, mute in Spanish.
00:26:57.821 --> 00:27:02.998
And this is something that would seem so obvious, but it's not always that obvious.
00:27:02.998 --> 00:27:05.060
I had to work around that.
00:27:05.141 --> 00:27:17.503
Sometimes I still make it, but well, you know, it's always good to have somebody that fully understands what the issues are, what the problems are and basically how to actually solve those problems.
00:27:17.503 --> 00:27:19.482
Because you know, you're absolutely right.
00:27:19.482 --> 00:27:23.840
I've actually seen people who say, well, you know, so-and-so took Spanish in high school.
00:27:23.840 --> 00:27:25.045
Have them translate it for you.
00:27:25.045 --> 00:27:27.663
Well, I mean, that's a huge mistake.
00:27:28.256 --> 00:27:36.279
So, you know, hopefully, Because Hispanics see through that you know, and they know that it's you know.
00:27:36.279 --> 00:27:48.150
Like no one's made an effort in that regard, and they may understand in Spanish whatever it is that they're saying, but they're not going to bond with the message if it doesn't appeal to them.
00:27:48.750 --> 00:27:49.391
I agree with you.
00:27:49.391 --> 00:27:58.258
Well, susan, you know this has been very, very informal.
00:27:58.258 --> 00:28:02.530
I'm just wondering if there's anything you think that you can add to our conversation about having folks make sure that they reach out to the Hispanic community and planning for events.
00:28:04.195 --> 00:28:29.308
Yeah, I think we've covered most of it, Peter, but I would just reiterate on the message that, yes, definitely, PR agencies should, if not always 90% of the time, include at least the option of giving this to their clients for them to understand what they may be missing out on if they don't include Hispanics in the conversation.
00:28:31.376 --> 00:28:32.762
Well, let me say thank you, sue.
00:28:32.762 --> 00:28:35.304
I very, very much appreciate it.
00:28:35.304 --> 00:28:37.403
My guest today has been Susan Mendoza.
00:28:37.403 --> 00:28:53.644
She's a publicist out of the New Jersey area and is giving some guidance so that you can make sure that your involvement with the Hispanic community works well and goes like it should go, because now you've got great advice and know what to do and do it the right way.
