That’s about all I can say for now. There will be more to share soon, but in the meantime there’s the work. Will report back soon.

Originally published on Forbes.com.

Before I start, let me just state for the record: I like Malcolm Gladwell. I am a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. I’ve read practically everything Malcolm Gladwell has written since he made the transition from science writer at The Washington Post to social science maven for The New Yorker. And it makes sense that I like him. During that time, I’ve grown up in the professional world of marketing, communications, and social movements in part by repackaging and reimagining the ideas that folks like Gladwell have popularized. Malcolm Gladwell is to my generation what Marshall McLuhan was to the Mad Men generation. Wickedly smart Canadians who have been able to reframe the conversation about marketing and media in America. I kinda owe him.

I’m only being somewhat facetious when I note that both Marshall and Malcolm come from Canada. In a later blog post, I’ll go deeper on that topic, pulling back the loose intellectual lineage that brought us both. It might have begun with McLuhan’s teacher, Harold Innis, the great professor from the University of Toronto who gave us, in the 1930s and 40s, a number of models for interpreting modern media (note: Gladwell is also a graduate of the University of Toronto). Innis, the story goes, excelled in his calling because he was Canadian. As a young man, he rode the Canadian railway — traversing the vast, cold, empty landscape — thinking about how Canadians have invented so many clever ways to overcome the tyranny of distance (the railway was just one of many gems). At the risk of acceding to a cultural stereotype — at least it’s a nice stereotype — I would argue that Canadians, who are at once outsiders and our closest cultural companions, are natural media mavens. Which might explain why they out-perform so many other people in the adoption of social media.

Good segueway perhaps to the subject of this post — the mess that Gladwell has gotten himself into with his readers — his admirers — since the Fall of 2010, just weeks before the midterm US elections. That’s when he published the now legendary piece on how social media plays an insignificant role in social movements.

The article appeared well before the uprisings in the Middle East, the Midwest, and elsewhere, but he continued to defend his position in a blog post in February. More recently, he appeared on television and again defended his position. On a Sunday show, he told CNN host Fareed Zakaria, “in cases where there are no tools of communication, people still get together…. I don’t see the absence of efficient tools of communication as being a limiting factor on the ability people to socially organize.”

When Gladwell published his first piece about Twitter, way back in October, the rap was that he was being disrespectful of the role that social media was seen to play in social movements. When he wrote the follow-up blog post in February — after the uprisings in Egypt — the rap was that he was being stubborn. After the CNN piece — in which Gladwell stumbled, paused, and pivoted to redirect the conversation after a tough question — a lot of folks might have started asking, “what the hell is really going on?” I wrote about the CNN spot a week ago, and I got a surprisingly big response — surprising because it was such a short piece (250 words) and posted on a Friday afternoon. It encouraged me to look more closely at the stubbornness of our Canadian friend, as well as the nature of our obsession with this story that won’t go away.

The strawman

First, it might help to look at the nature of Gladwell’s argument, as he laid it out in his original article (titled, “Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted”). The article starts out the way most Gladwell pieces do — not with an insight, but rather with the data for the insight, which always comes later. He tells the story of the 1960 Woolworths lunch counter protest in Greensboro, North Carolina — the Woolworths staff refused to serve blacks — one of the greatest episodes of the civil rights movement. He shows how the protest grew from four people on a Monday, to 27 people the next morning, to 80 the next day, to 600 by the end of the week. “By the following Monday,” writes Gladwell, “sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away.” It was a real movement, and it was executed without the benefit of anything resembling the communication tools we have today.

It’s an easy argument: the absence of a tool does not prevent people from getting together to do things, a line of argument that Gladwell repeated in his spot on CNN. He then goes on to show that two of the then-most talked about social media-assisted movements — the uprisings in Moldova and Iran — had little to do with social media at all. That’s a tougher argument — that social media, so far, has not played a big role in social movements. And in the hands of another writer, the article might have ended there. But Gladwell’s stock in trade is not in reporting that something works, but in describing how it works … or doesn’t work — the science behind the phenomenon. Act II of his article is a long and curious discussion of why social media is ill suited for the work of social movements.

At this point, a sensitive reader might feel that something odd has happened. In fact, something has. Gladwell has constructed a strawman — no one serious would argue that social media is the driver of social movements (that the revolution will be tweeted). It’s a lot more complex than that. But he subjects the strawman to the Gladwellian “how it works” treatment, and, surprise, social media comes up short.

The crux of the argument is this: social movements are based on strong ties — close relationships with people with deep, shared interests. Strong ties, Gladwell shows, is what made the Greensboro protest happen. Same for other movements (Moldova, Iran, East Berlin, before the wall came down). Social media, on the other hand, is about weak ties — relationships with friends of friends. We cannot hope to do the serious work of organizing with people we don’t really know. At best, they can only connect us with new ideas, new people, and help us distribute our own ideas to people outside our immediate reach.

But note: in social networking, “weak ties” is not a perjorative term, and Gladwell admits that. But by making social media alone the strawman in his argument — and not the entire movement in which social media only plays a part — Gladwell positions weak ties as the Achille’s heel in an online social movement. That’s like arguing that a gas-pedal can’t start a car because it doesn’t have an ignition. Gladwell is such a good writer that you may not notice. But this subtle intellectual sleight-of-hand obscures not only the rules that govern the world of social media (a digital, virtual world), but also the role that it plays in the world where strong ties rule — the physical world of late-night planning sessions, door-to-door canvassing, and picket lines).

And that’s the problem. By segregating the virtual world from the physical world, Gladwell risks losing the insight required to explain either very well. You don’t have to be a social-media guru to know how the two worlds are joined. On the lighter side of the spectrum there’s Internet dating, where weak ties may in fact bring the right people together and later establish the strongest of ties (marriage). On the other side, there are any number of social movements that have developed, and continue to develop, on the same principle.

I’ve had first-hand experience with this. About 18 months ago, I first made contact — online — with a Latino non-profit that has a huge digital presence. I attended one of their live conferences just a few months later. Soon after I joined their board, and began organizing conferences with them. Today I regard some of my LATISM compadres as friends — real friends. They are among my strongest ties. If I had not met them online, I would never have met them offline so quickly and start doing the work of planning a movement. And yes, the work required to start a movement demands special attention. Gladwell is right about that.

Malcolm in the middle

But what do we make of Gladwell’s strawman-making — his refusal to give social media the credit it’s due? I believe there are two good explanations.

1. “It’s not that interesting.” First it’s important to understand what Gladwell does for a living. Yes, he is a thinker who has a deep, abiding interest in the social sciences, but he is not a social scientist. He is a reporter, and reporters thrive on their ability to describe not only what’s relevant — the stuff that helps us understand the world around us — but also what’s new. Gladwell’s particular gift is to make his beat accessible to the masses, while framing the material so that it is almost always surprising. It’s not just educational to read Gladwell; it’s also fun. As I’ve noted before, he is the master of the counter-intuitive, and that mastery has made Gladwell very popular.

In the end, Gladwell’s duty to us — as a reporter — is not only to inform us, but to entertain us as well. When he wrote the blog post in February, defending his article back in October, he concluded, “[p]eople with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.”

Emphasis on interesting. Is it possible that social media — a topic that inspires countless opinions every single day and that has spawned at least a hundred books — does not cut it as a serious topic? If yes, that might help explain why Gladwell has never written much on the subject, with the few notable exceptions. He is far more interested in the real world, though it’s one that is too neatly detached from the virtual world that complements it.

2. “It’s not my beat.” But what about this real world, and what is Gladwell’s attachment to it? I suspect that there might be something personal here; it would be very human for Gladwell to protect a beat that has brought him fame and recognition. From The Tipping Point (his first book) to What the Dog Saw (his latest), he has almost always written about remarkable people and their ability to beat the odds — in marketing, in sports, in life. Across the wide range of things that social-science writers cover, Malcolm Gladwell clearly comes down on the side of humans. And I suspect that he is not only defending the particular beat he has carved out but the unique place he occupies on that beat. And perhaps this is why he appears to be defensive when talking about social media. For Gladwell, it could be personal.

But why then do we care so much about what one man thinks? When talking about Gladwell in public forums, I sometimes quip that he has been caught in the middle — Malcolm in the middle — of the virtual world and the physical world, and left alone defending one of them. That might be true, but I think that this might be less of a problem for him than it is for us. I spent some time collecting and sifting through the hundreds of articles and blog posts about Gladwell since the article in October. Many of them are angry and disappointed, as if Gladwell, somehow, has let the world down (argument = with influence comes responsibility). At a time when so many people around the world are making their voices heard and practicing the hard work of social organization, the idea that one person could stand in the way and let the world down seems antiquated (perhaps a topic for a future discussion that even Gladwell would find interesting). Gladwell is not a 2011 Middle Eastern despot standing in the way of intellectual expression. Yet we’re acting as if he were. That is so one-dot-oh. If someone is truly bothered that our favorite social science maven is not doing the work of explaining the world we’ve inherited, let him or her stand up and do something about it. The problem is that we become too attached to our leaders, especially if we feel we owe them (my note at the top of this article). Yet every generation brings a new crop of leaders, and perhaps the time has come for a new kind of book. Just don’t be surprised if it comes Canada.

***

Anyone who has spent any time in the enterprise 2.0 business – for me, it’s been five years – will admit this, if pressured: by far the greatest challenge for the market is not corporate fear, cluelessness, or laziness – the usual scapegoats. The challenge is something far more elusive: getting people in the company to adopt the program meaningfully, persistently, and scalably. The truth is that many enterprise 2.0 programs fail to gain traction because they actually require work. In the enterprise, culture matters, and culture is not something you can easily add, game, or integrate, like the latest 2.0 widget.

But that’s where the consensus ends. A large number of businesses have not been able to move forward with their enterprise 2.0 programs for lack of confidence on the right way to approach culture. One side of the consulting world has spoken up rather aggressively, with the message that culture can be addressed with something called “change management.” But the phrase alone is enough to scare off most of the market. It sounds too expensive – and it often is – and in many cases it just adds an unnecessary layer of complexity to a smaller set of things that can be done.

Here are a few things that I observed work well, sometimes with the support of people in the consulting community who see the need for a leaner, meaner approach.

The Audit

It might seem like a rather obvious place to start. But many businesses jump on enterprise 2.0 projects without first asking what their constituents are actually doing. What tools do employees, partners, and customers use? What are they using them for? Think broadly about these two questions before conducting your “audit” – a fancy word for listening – because we tend to think narrowly about social media.

First, we tend to exclude services and tools that de facto are social, but because they originated in an earlier era, they do not enter our minds in this context. Second, we tend to exclude activities that are not directly related to communications and collaboration, but yet might have value to the enterprise social network.

Several years ago, when I was in the consulting business, a large telecommunications company asked my agency for general recommendations on their social strategy. In our audit, we discovered that while an overwhelming number of people inside their ecosystem were loath to contribute or comment on blogs and social networks, a great number spent time networking with peers on LinkedIn groups. Neither the tool – LinkedIn – nor the activity – professional development – made the initial list of things to examine in our audit. But after this small discovery, the project moved on a faster track for the company.
The Mirror

If the insights from the audit are good, an effective next step is to share them with managers in the company. Done right, this exchange of information does several things at once. First, it makes visible to the top of the organization what’s happening at the grassroots. Second, it educates managers on the range of immediate tools and ideas it has at its disposal (recall the little epiphany we had at the telecommunications company). Third, it helps stimulate conversation about how the company might support a promising trend.

Some time after staffers at Best Buy began demonstrating the power of employee-driven communications – best evidenced in the now famous Blue Shirt Nation – my former agency prepared a number of documents, videos and other artifacts that essentially held a mirror to the organization (see Charlene Li’s “Open Leadership” for more color and detail). This exercise helped pave the way for other projects at Best Buy that had the support of management. As many early thought leaders in the Enterprise 2.0 world have noted, the most successful projects start at the bottom but meet at the middle, with support from the top of the organization.
The Metatribe

Sometimes, the mirror takes the conversation to another place: how the programs that a company strategically decides to support might have a catalyzing effect on the entire company and its ecosystem. In the world of political marketing, we’ve learned how a few very diverse groups – e.g., women, Latinos, progressives, conservatives – can rally to a cause, despite their differences.

Recent, I looked at how the 2010 elections inspired a number of operatives – on the Left and the Right – to court the big unwieldy Latino metatribe. Similar opportunities exist for large companies with diverse constituents who might come together if only they understood their part in the company’s social agenda. Best Buy’s Twelpforce – a big part of the company’s public brand – comes to mind, and there are perhaps a few others that demonstrate this principle.

But a company may not even need to go there to enjoy the benefits of 2.0, nor will it need to spend much time to get something meaningful started. Best Buy and other companies that are featured at industry conferences as case studies all got started by listening, thinking and supporting.

That’s the fastest path to adoption today, and I don’t see anything better on the horizon.

***

A study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project confirmed what a lot of us in the Latino marketing community have known. Latinos index higher than any other group on Twitter. In a survey conducted last month – running up to the Thanksgiving holiday – 18 percent of Latino respondents who spend time online have a Twitter account, versus 13 percent of non-Hispanic blacks and 5 percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Looking at these and other numbers, many people will ask, “what is it about Latinos – are they more social?” But for marketers, there’s a more immediate, perhaps mundane question: “how do you effectively engage Latinos on Twitter, one of the fastest growing segments on one of the fastest growing networks?”

The question is a lot less simplistic than it sounds. For many marketers today, the raw numbers that characterize the Latino market have gotten more visibility than the soft science that experts use to build meaningful plans for engagement. This is the world of the social Web, and a fascination with the long tail of Latinos alone will only get you so far. What’s required here is a bit of work, though not so much work that it should discourage anyone. It’s just a different kind of work – social work, if you will. Here’s a simple approach that has worked well for many people who are new to the Latino Twitter community. It worked for me. Though I’ve been on Twitter since the early days, I’ve been a resident of the Latino Twittersphere for little more than a year.

Find

Remember: there are a lot of Latinos on Twitter, more than any other ethnic group. But, as I noted in my opening post on the Marketing to Latinos column, it would be wrong to think of Latinos as a single tribe. Instead, think of us as a “metatribe,” a very loose confederation of different groups that sometimes come together around a big idea, a big cause, a movement – and even then, it would be wrong to expect unanimity. The challenge of connecting with the right people is serious. Fortunately, Latinos not only index higher; we self-index more, too. Latinos themselves have organized themselves in a number of ways on Twitter. Start with Twitter lists. For a great example – a true long tail of Latinos, capturing the megastars as well as the newbies – see Lori Gama’s list on Listorious. But this is just one person’s list; Latinos have self-indexed so well that there’s now a long tail of long-tail lists. To catch a glimpse of this – if you want, if you dare – try searching the Twitter list archive on tools such as TLists.

Sort

But just finding people who have been indexed – or who have self-indexed – as Latinos is not enough. You will want to know more about them. There’s no substitute, of course, for following, reading, and engaging people to truly explore what the basis for a relationship might be (more on that in a moment). But you might also want to avail yourself to any number of tools that can help you understand someone’s profile. One cool tool – which is getting an increasing amount of attention – is Klout, which not only attempts to measure the influence of all Twitter users using a number of indices beyond the number of followers, but also categorizes people according to their roles in the Twitter ecosystem. (For an interesting look at Latino “influentials” on Klout, go to Tomás Custer’s Hispanic Tips.) Using a Gartner Magic Quadrant-like schema, Klout places people into 16 possible categories, ranging from observer to celebrity. Think of it as a Myers-Briggs personality test for the Twitter set, but with an unforgiving Darwinian twist. While it’s nice to find oneself in a group of supposedly likeminded people, nobody likes being in the lower left-hand quadrant, and I suspect that this might limit the tool’s appeal. Nor does the Klout profile tell you enough to give you a real sense of the person: her tastes, her likelihood to follow and chat with you, etc.

Join

To be fair to Klout and other measurement tools, that’s not what they are meant to do. At best, they are about influence, not about engagement.

For that, you might even skip the first two steps, and go straight to the third: joining existing conversations that Latinos are having on Twitter. The easiest way to join is the hashtag, which in the Latino world has great utility. At almost any moment of the day, you can click on #hispanics, #latinos, and #latism and join a lively conversation. (Disclosure: I serve on the board of LATISM (Latinos in Social Media), the organization behind the hashtag.) This is a conversational medium, after all, and there’s no better way to learn about people than to speak with them. Also check out Twitteros, a “network for digitally influential Latinos.” This community also provides brands a way to be visible in these conversations through sponsoring and advertising opportunities.

Hashtags – which were invented by users, not product marketing folks – support the spontaneous, emergent behavior that makes Twitter such a fluid, dynamic environment. And they serve as the simple mechanism that enables people to engage in what is perhaps the most fluid, real-time conversational format on the social Web today: the Twitter party. Several Latino groups host live chats on Twitter, and the parties have attracted sponsorships from major brands.

But the real value comes from participating in these chats (assuming you can type fast enough). Because the real value in Twitter is conversation, and for whatever reason, Latinos like talking on Twitter (listen to what two Latino tweeps Julio Ricardo Varela and Julie Diaz-Asper have to say on this subject). Is it because Latinos are more social – the big question posed at the beginning of this post? Who knows? But I like Carrie Ferguson Weir’s suggestion that perhaps Latinos were the original retweeters (see below) – repeaters of information, long before the new conversational tool arrived. Conversation is an ancient art, and marketers hoping to engage Latinos should probably think less about the tools and more about the rules of being social.

***

A few weeks ago – shortly after the election – the Pew Hispanic Center released a study with a bombshell of a headline, the kind that digital marketing professionals take great care to craft because, if done right, the results can be huge: “National Latino Leader? The Job is Open.”

As with most great headlines, the facts of the story were framed for effect. The Pew study, based on a recent survey of 1,375 U.S. Latinos, had found that nearly two thirds could not answer when asked to name the person they consider “the most important Latino leader in the country today.” Second most popular answer? “No one.” Of course, there are many ways to interpret these numbers. But Pew’s headline swiftly spawned hundreds of similar headlines – on columns, blogs, and yes, on Twitter – which is all about headlines – for stories debating whether Latinos even need a single national leader. (We’re too diverse. And, by the way, what other ethnic groups have “national leaders”?) And yes, people are still writing. It was a great result for a minor survey. The “Leaderless Latinos” debate has legs, as they say in the entertainment business.

For the headline, you can’t really blame the editors at Pew. It’s what they do. It’s hard to get anyone to focus on real research in the new “attention economy.” Still, there’s something important that’s missing in this story, as reported both by Pew and the many people who have so far weighed in. The great “Leaderless Latinos” debate has ignored the conditions in which mass movements get started, and leaders are made, particularly when the groups they represent are so complex and diverse. And there’s no better case study than the Tea Party, as unseemly or unsavory as that might seem to some, but perhaps not all Latinos.

Why does this matter to marketers? Well, already there are rumblings from an emergent group that professes to mimic the Tea Party, not in substance but “in its grass-roots organizational style.” The name for this group: the Tequila Party, of course, according to a now widely discussed article last weekend in the Las Vegas Sun.

And it’s interesting that the party has an informal supporter in Robert de Posada , the man who was recently inducted into the Latino Hall of Shame – perhaps fairly – for urging Latinos not to vote. That’s prompted many folks to wonder if the Tequila Party is for real, or masterful sleight of hand by marketing pros.Too early to tell. In the meantime, here’s what marketers across the political spectrum can learn from the Tea Party and see why Latinos might very well adopt the Tea Party model.

Movements start with the disenfranchised. In one of the more thoughtful reactions to the Pew study, syndicated columnist Esther Cepeda noted, “the 48 million Latinos who comprise the nation’s largest minority are not an oppressed class forced to set aside such factors as diverse as native country, preferred language or citizenship status.” It’s a fair point – Latinos today may not need the next Cesar Chavez. But it fails to address what Pew and other research groups have uncovered about how most Latinos feel about big tent issues like discrimination. Pew recently reported that 61 percent of Latinos surveyed say “discrimination against Hispanics is a ‘major problem’” – more than 7 points higher since 2007, when the survey was last conducted. Nor does Cepeda’s column fairly address the recent vote in Nevada and California, where tough Republican stands on immigration pushed Latinos leftward. It would be foolish to underestimate Latino sentiment in the next election, just as it was foolish to underestimate what The New Yorker writer Ben McGrath described as the “longtail of disaffection” that came together as the Tea Party in 2009 to 2010.

Movements start on the ground. If Latinos in 2012 rally around a similar strain of disaffection, it would not be the first time. Looking back at the farm labor movement in the early sixties, Froben Lozada recently told the Houston Chronicle, “It can happen again. It can be very quiet and silent now, but you never know when they [the people] will all of a sudden start raising all kinds of hell.” But if it does happen again, and history is a guide, it will certainly start at the grassroots. Harvard professor Jill Lepore’s recent book on the Tea Party movement confirms what many marketing pros suspected. And many students of the movement have noted that the social Web was a huge accelerant for organizing at the grassroots. The movement began with a true local effort, only later supported by big national interests.

Movements create platforms for leaders, not leaders with platforms. Finally, what are the chances that a movement today can create a single national leader? Again, look at the Tea Party movement, whose rank-and-file take special pride in not having a single leader (Lepore and others have recorded the words of many Tea Party followers who openly disdain Sarah Palin). Just the same, the movement has served as a platform for numerous candidates to get known, get elected, and get a national audience.

If Latinos self-organize for 2012, a similar platform might emerge. As for the Tequila Party, I doubt that many Latinos would come together under such a facetious umbrella (and one that reinforces a cultural stereotype). Safe bet is that the Tequila Party is a trial balloon for a far more serious effort. We’ll see. In the meantime, I’m betting that the inspiration – the Tea Party model – will appeal to many disgruntled Latinos, on the left and on the right. And whether that means more national leaders or just more local leaders, who knows? But leaders will arise, and some will surprise, I am sure. In 2012, Pew may have to come up with a different headline.

UPDATE: The original version of this column identified Robert de Posada as a spokesperson for a group of politicians that has been speaking about starting the so-called Tequila Party. De Posada subsequently told ClickZ that he has no formal connection with the group – and this column has been corrected to reflect that.

***

At a time when immigration has dominated conversation about Latino growth in the U.S., a new book urges businesses to look at trends in the larger, virtual Latinosphere. In “Latino Link,” Chicago-based marketing consultant Joe Kutchera takes a close look at recent patterns in Latino digital life and makes a number of well-reasoned recommendations for businesses. Along the way, he explains why content is still king, why Spain and Mexico may be bigger virtually than physically, and how Google and Facebook offer two approaches – but no final answers – to building a global presence on the social Web. I caught up with Joe on e-mail last week, between stops on his first national book tour.

Giovanni Rodriguez: How did you get into Latino marketing?

Joe Kutchera: First of all, thanks for interviewing me here on ClickZ.

If your readers have the opportunity to open up my book, Latino Link, and read the dedication, they will see what inspired me to write the book and combine my career in digital marketing with Spanish-language media. “This book is dedicated to my parents who met in Spanish class, honeymooned in Mexico, and had me nine months later. I’ve loved learning to speak Spanish ever since.”

After working for a number of Time Warner divisions including Warner Bros., This Old House, and CNNMoney, I had the opportunity to start the digital ad sales and marketing team for Expansion in Mexico City, just after Time Warner had purchased the company. After that, I started the Spanish-language ad network for ContextWeb in New York. So, it was during my last two positions that I worked in Latino marketing.

GR: Tell me about Spanish lessons. Any tips for non-Latinos?

JK: Learning to speak another language means learning how to think and look at the world in a different way. I’ve always loved learning to speak Spanish, traveling to Latin American and Spain, and learning about their respective cultures. Not only is that because of my parents, as mentioned above, but also because I loved how different Latin America is from the Midwest, where I grew up. I strongly recommend working abroad to learn or perfect a foreign language. I learned so much while working in Mexico. And that’s what lead me into Hispanic marketing.

For marketers, I recommend taking a look at the work of the organizational sociologist, Geert Hofstede. He analyzed four dimensions of cultural differences in the workplace. One of those includes individualism versus collectivism. The U.S. is highly individualistic, therefore many of our advertising messages reflect that value. In contrast, Mexico and Latin America fall on the other side of the spectrum. Their collectivistic orientation means that marketers ought to incorporate groups of people into advertising images and promote product benefits for families and groups versus individuals. When crafting a campaign for U.S. Hispanics, a collectivistic message can oftentimes prove more effective.

GR: I love how your book shows that Latinos will cross virtual borders to get what they need. Who owns all the great content online today?

JK: As the saying goes, “content is king.” And content from one’s country of origin can act as a gigantic magnet, attracting consumers back to Mexico virtually. The major newspapers in Latin America (e.g., El Universal, El Tiempo, Clarin, etc.) see anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of their visitors from the U.S. They own a good chunk of the quality content in Spanish online today. Or, if you love a soccer team from Mexico, the best place to find the latest news about them may be from Medio Tiempo in Mexico City, for example. But, because both the Hispanic and Latin American audiences tend to be younger, many of them blog or use Twitter, so you can find a lot of content on the social networks.

In addition, many Latin Americans look to the U.S. for the latest technology and fashion trends for example. Therefore, they visit U.S. sites to get that information.

GR: I also love what you say about Latinos crossing physical borders to shop in the U.S. What can brands learn from this?

JK: Brands can expand their businesses virtually online and serve the Mexicans who spend on average $20 billion to $40 billion annually in the U.S. Mexico represents only one of the many countries whose citizens rationalize trips to the U.S. for shopping.

Compare the price of a laptop in Mexico versus the U.S. and what do you find? The laptop in the U.S. typically costs half as much. Why? Higher taxes and prices in Mexico. It’s no accident that Carlos Slim, one of the top 3 richest men in the world, lives in Mexico. He owns about 7 percent of the GDP of Mexico and many of his businesses have become monopolies. As a result, many middle and upper class Mexicans shop in the U.S. not only to save money but also to buy aspirational products that are not available in Mexico.

GR: From where you sit, what companies really understand the new realities of Latino marketing? What can everyone learn from them?

JK: All of the companies that provided case studies for my book!

Seriously though, take a look at what these companies have done: Best Buy, American Family Insurance, H&R Block, Continental Airlines, Kraft, plus the Spanish-language media companies – Telemundo, Univision, ImpreMedia, and Hoy/Tribune.

GR: In the final sections of your book, you look at two models for distribution on the Web: Facebook and Google. What are the relative merits of each, and what will come next?

JK: This issue boils down to the following: do you want one global “.com” site like Facebook where users customize their online experience with their relationships and personal interests? Or does your company want to manage one country-specific website for each country you do business in? There are pluses and minuses for each. My book outlines the technical recommendations. But underneath it all, it boils down to the Web becoming more collectivistic and global and less country-oriented.

GR: What comes next for Joe Kutchera?

JK: I’ve started working with Insitum, an innovation, design, and market research consultancy with offices in Chicago, Mexico City, Bogota, and Sao Paulo. We help companies develop new products for both the Hispanic and Latin American marketplaces.

In addition, some companies have asked me to give workshops based upon my research in the book. That will continue to grow in the months ahead.

Did you hear the news – widely reported earlier this fall – that Latinos outlive most of the U.S. population? If you are Latino, I’m sure it made your day. I’ve been following the chatter on Twitter – the party is still going strong – and the big vibe, of course, is ethnic pride. But if you are a marketer – or a marketer who happens to be Latino – perhaps you were confused, skeptical, or curious to learn more.

Truth is, we should all be curious. The news was based on a recently published study by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, and it happens to be the first federally-funded study on Latino life expectancy. The implications for marketing – across a broad range of sectors – are profound. But if we aren’t confused (Latinos live longer – huh?), we should at least be skeptical. Because the “Latinos Live Longer” headline obscures several things that could be helpful to marketers.

The little ingredients. The big headline was supported by the big number in the survey. The life expectancy of Latinos born in 2006 is 80.6 years, versus 77.7 for the general population. It begs the question (and many people asked it), how can this be when there are more than three times as many Latinos as there are whites below the poverty level? This is known as the “Latino Paradox,” and there are several competing explanations for it. Many reporters cited the theory that immigrants – just one segment of the population – live longer because they’re rougher, tougher, eat less, and smoke less (and some even drink less, too). Who knows, but one thing’s for sure – the 80.6 number is a big number that needs to be unbundled. It’s an aggregate of smaller numbers about diverse segments – young, old, rich, poor, man, woman, first generation, second generation, etc. – that have far greater value to marketing people.

The melting pot. One of the smaller numbers is attached to Latinos who are born in the U.S. This, of course, begins with the second generation of immigrants who spend significantly more time in the melting pot, and get the good and the bad from that experience. Let’s look at the bad. A number of studies show that Latinos born in the U.S. fare worse, and are at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. What’s in the melting pot? Perhaps something toxic. But even if that were not true, marketers might have an opportunity to promote the good things that immigrant Latinos put into the melting pot…for the benefit of the entire population. “We might want to see what Hispanics are doing and try to emulate them,” said Carl Haub, in an interview for USA Today. Perhaps. But maybe we should be emulating immigrant Latinos or promoting traditional – pre-melting pot – Latino values. There’s a precedent for this in recent Latino marketing. The NBA and Volkswagen have launched campaigns aimed at both general and Latino audiences promoting values that run deep in large parts of Latino culture (passion, cunning, thrift). We haven’t seen this kind of marketing in food, healthcare, or government – the immediate markets that can leverage the data from the CDC study – but perhaps we will soon.

The Latino social network. There’s another theory why Latinos – I mean, some Latinos – live longer. A few of the many experts who weighed in on the CDC story observed that Latinos, in general, enjoy stronger social bonds. The impact on health is meaningful. “The people across the board who live oldest and healthiest are people who are part of social networks,” said Dr. Jane Delgado, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Hispanic Health, in an interview with ABC News. And of course, the reverse is true. “If you lose that family connectedness, then you tend to have more health problems,” said Delgado. It brings to mind Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers,” the 2008 book about why some people do better than others. In the opening chapter, he investigates a Pennsylvania town where the incidence of heart disease is dramatically lower than surrounding environments. What he discovered was a tightly bound community of Italian immigrants who replicated the lifestyle of their town – Roseto Valfortore – in the old country. Yes, the social network matters. For Gladwell, who vastly prefers offline to online networks (read his recent essay on the limits of Twitter as a tool for social change), the social network is more of the Roseto variety – a flesh-and-blood, brick-and-mortar community. But for innovators in digital media who understand that virtual life can strengthen “real” life, there may be a big opportunity. It wouldn’t be the first time the digital world found a way to do well by doing good. But it could be the first in the name of Latino longevity, which – thanks to the CDC – is now legendary. That would be good not only for Latinos, but for everyone else who stews in the melting pot.

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It’s become somewhat of a talking point at marketing conferences that Latinos are not a single monolithic entity, but rather a diverse collection of people of different cultures, interests, and political persuasions. As syndicated columnist Esther Cepeda recently wrote, anyone hoping to reach Latinos needs to ask, “which Latinos? – there are so many different kinds.” But another popular talking point – which on the surface might appear contradictory – is that Latinos tend to rally if approached the right way, or attacked the wrong way as pointed out here. So while it may be naïve to think of Latinos as a single tribe, it’s smart to think of us as a metatribe – a confederation of groups that sometimes come together, despite our differences.

Therein lies the opportunity – and the danger – for so many marketers. If you mess up, the consequences could be huge. We’re seeing this drama played out in several high-profile political campaigns – from the California gubernatorial election, to the U.S. Senator’s race in Nevada – where contestants may be paying the price for gaffes, flubs, and campaign rhetoric that compromised their standing with Latino voters. But it came as a surprise to many marketing insiders when a little known group called Latinos for Reform did something that was almost certain to rile Latinos. In a series of video and radio ad pieces, the group urged Latino voters to punish Democrats who allegedly failed to live up to their promises for immigration reform. How do voters punish Democrats? By not voting in the elections this Fall. (The group later claimed there was an un-aired version that also targeted Republicans.)

Before I go any further, let me be clear: I was among the many people that were outraged by the campaign. But I was more curious than angry. For me, the question was not “how could they?” The question was “why would they?” Why would anyone intentionally mess with the metatribe?

On the face of it, the Latinos for Reform campaign was not a success. Word of the campaign mobilized news outlets everywhere to swiftly condemn it. Latino groups across the political spectrum also weighed in negatively. And it didn’t stop there. Within days of the news, even conservatives began to distance themselves from the campaign, including Sharron Angle, the Republican nominee in the Nevada U.S. Senate race whom the ad seemed to support (though Democrats griped that her words came too late). But more damaging was the well-publicized decision at Univision – the Spanish-language media giant – to pull the ad. After that, Robert de Posada, the former director of Hispanic Affairs for the GOP, and man behind this campaign, conceded there was no point in continuing to place the ad. Univision owns his target market.

But does it really? One of the most remarkable things about de Posada’s campaign is how little the ads actually ran on TV and radio. In Nevada, a big focus for the campaign, it appears to have run only five times. And even if de Posada had chosen to run the ads more aggressively, his budget would have limited the effort significantly. The Wall Street Journal reported a surprisingly modest war chest: $125,000. Not much you can buy with that. But with a controversial story circulating widely around the Web, the YouTube Spanish and English versions of the ads have already gotten close to 150,000 views. And that’s not including all the articles, opinion pieces, and press releases that have given voice to de Posada’s claim that Democrats have betrayed Latinos.

“That’s not a bad result,” says Jose Villa, founder and president of Sensis, an LA-based ad agency. “And regardless of what you think of the campaign, it may have been an effective way to reach an important audience – acculturated Latinos who spend a lot of time on the Internet.” Villa notes that the offending words – “Don’t vote” – don’t even appear until late in the ad. For the 1:12 minutes of the English-language version, it’s more like the typical negative TV ad you’d see any night in the election season – though, of course, a lot longer (another great thing about ads on the Web).

We don’t know enough yet to give credit to de Posada for this strategy (he did not respond to our request for an interview). But it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a commercial-you-never-saw was the driving force of a Web campaign. Several years ago, in an attempt to curry favor with Rolling Rock customers, Anheuser-Busch created an intentionally tasteless video that recalled the glory days of advertising for the company, the era of Spuds MacKenzie. Anheuser-Busch had just acquired Rolling Rock and realized that irony might be just the right ingredient to win over the new crowd. Rolling Rock took out billboards in major cities apologizing for airing commercials, directing people to a website. But the funny thing was that the video never aired on TV. The video lived on the Web. Result: the “commercial” – the Rolling Rock Beer Ape – was one of the most popular videos on YouTube in November 2006.

Of course, there’s a world of difference between beer and votes. And Anheuser-Busch earned more credit than scorn for the fake campaign by being funny; no one is laughing at the “Don’t vote” commercials. And the effect of baiting the metatribe – or, more precisely, linkbaiting the metatribe – did a lot to damage the reputation of de Posada’s 527 organization. But like many battles in marketing, short-term gains are all that matter to some practitioners of the art. As of this past weekend, the Nevada Senate race was too close to call. But whether voters swing to the right or to the left, no doubt we’ll soon be asking if the Beer Ape strategy had anything to do with it.

Gustavo suggested a really neat twist to the panel format — he asked each of us to tweet four comments before the event so that Rick could grab the screen shots and prepare them as slides. Rick then mixed the order of the slides, so as to ensure a fun and lively conversation. Gotta say, I have served on many panels, and this by far was the best one yet. Credit goes not only to Rick — a masterful, funny, energetic moderator — but to Carlos as well. As producer of the event, Carlos was wise enough to give more time to this panel than others might have. Both the panelists and the audience benefited.

So here are my slides — I mean tweets — from the panel session. To see Gustavo Razzetti’s tweets and comments on the event, go here.

<--This was a context-setter for some of our talk on the panel. For too many companies, social media is a channel -- simply another avenue for communications. But social is becoming much more than that. In many ways it’s the new UI/UE -- user interface/user experience -- for all communications. All interaction with media -- whether it's on TV, the computer, the mobile device -- is becoming social. Understanding this broader trend can help organizations plan their marketing strategies more thoughtfully, more strategically.

<--This is the foundation of my new "stump speech" at Latin-American marketing and communication conferences, and I previewed it not too long ago at the kickoff for the LATISM’s Latino2 event series. The thesis is that the Latinosphere — the world of Latin-American online influence — is vast, diverse, and complex, and organizations hoping to engage with Latinos online need to think about these complexities.

<--But here's the rub -- despite the complexity and diversity of interests in the Latinosphere, many Latinos tend to rally together around core issues. The panel briefly discussed how the contestants in the California Governor's race are now experiencing this as a result of the so-called nannygate scandal. I cite one of my favorite Ruben Blades songs, “Todos Vuelven” (”todos vuelven a la tierra en que nacieron”). Given the right mood and the right moment, we all return to the homeland, though the homeland today is just as likely as it is to be virtual as it is physical. (And by the way, Ruben has a virtual home in the Latinosphere, as does his long time collaborator, Willie Colon).

<--Finally, I noted some of the big numbers that characterize the Latino online market. Spanish is now the number-three language on the Web, trailing only English and Chinese. Latinos are joining social networks faster than any other ethnic group. Latinos are graying slower than many other ethnic groups. But it's not just the young-uns that are joining the Latinosphere, but "abuela" and "abuelo," too. There was a time not long ago when businesses were writing off social media as a generational trend that would fade soon. I always felt that this perspective was short-sighted. Not only does it ignore the obvious fact that today's youth is tomorrow's leadership, it also fails to appreciate the current trends in social-media adoption. Everyone is beginning to join online networks, and the Latinosphere — one of the most vibrant meta-communities online — is emerging as one of the most interesting case studies: a complex, diverse, mostly virtual world that somehow — sometimes — manages to come together when it matters most.

It was a thrilling experience, from a bygone era. Of course, few people today would rush to the newsstand to read a paper to learn what a powerful reviewer had to say. For many today, there are no newstands, no papers, and powerful reviewers in print are few and far between (except, again, in the theater world, where an aging, well-to-do population still tends to support the entire enterprise). But it’s still a thrill to wake up on a Sunday morning and realize that there are a good number of people in San Francisco reading about our new venture, out on the street, inside cafes, around the breakfast table, on their treadmills, and that many are reading the article not on computers, tablets and other devices, but from the big, broadsheet, inky pages of The San Francisco Chronicle. Yeah, it’s a cheap thrill — there are far more important things to the life of a company than publicity. But it’s certainly not cheap in terms of the news business. It costs more than ever for a news organization to give you a small piece of real estate on their Sunday pages. And for that I am thankful to Benny Evangelista and his editors at the Chron for betting that local readers would care about this comeback story. We got lots of virtual ink this week, and I am grateful for all of it, because today it’s the whole, not the part — the long tail of coverage, not any one story — that ultimately matters. This one story — though small — was special for its unique, offline contribution to the conversation about BroadVision.