CASE STUDY

Award-Winning Campaign: Connect + Build + Grow

Organization: The Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce

Background

The Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce (HISCEC) is an online business association that helps small businesses connect with each other and grow using its proprietary software applications through its online platform.

HISCEC held a two-day business exposition, the Hispanic Business Showcase at the San Diego Convention Center. The event hosted workshops, panels, exhibitors, and featured a Technology Pavilion, where HISCEC launched its new online platform. The Showcase provided small businesses an opportunity to increase their company’s awareness with the Hispanic business community.

HISCEC executives were leery about launching a costly and comprehensive brand awareness campaign of any real size in order to attract new members to its business association and participants for its inaugural event, and looked to DIÁLOGO for help. What the agency quickly determined was that an aggressive public relations campaign that pinpointed specific small business audiences and business media could shorten HISCEC’s new member and event partner sales cycles without breaking the budget.

The objectives of Connect + Build + Grow

Connect sponsors and participants to the 2010 Hispanic Business Showcase.
Build membership by generating awareness with small Hispanic-owned and -focused businesses, as a trusted in-culture small business resource.
Grow business media awareness and relevant impressions.

To increase awareness of the event and Build membership of the business association, DIALOGO deployed a dual media relations and word-of-mouth strategy. To Connect influential corporate sponsors and to secure a dominant, local Hispanic media sponsor, DIALOGO’s goal was to generate a minimum of 500,000 media impressions for the campaign. To Grow media awareness, the target was English-preferred business media in San Diego County area as well as national English-language Hispanic media.

Online Media & Word-of-Mouth Insights: A Pew Hispanic Center study found that U.S. Hispanics are taking to the Internet at record rates. Moreover, word-of-mouth is the single biggest consumer determinant within the Hispanic small business community. Understanding the media’s powerful influence over Hispanic business owners and their marketing choices, we knew that a compelling media platform would enable HISCEC’s message to reach their target.

Property Insights: As a result of the contraction within the business media industry there has been a proliferation of new, highly targeted niche online business publications. Moving quickly, DIÁLOGO established content sharing relationships with many such publications.

Media research found that both general market and Spanish and English language Hispanic business outlets were enthusiastic about receiving quality commentary content. Commentary placement provided HISCEC more substantive and relevant coverage in major Hispanic- and business-focused business publications. Hispanic Business Magazine hailed the commentary, while PODER Magazine, the nation’s leading English-language Hispanic-focused magazine, provided DIÁLOGO a column for nationwide exposure. On the local level, Daniel Munoz, editor for La Prensa San Diego, San Diego’s leading English-language Hispanic publication published several articles covering HISCEC and its event.

DIÁLOGO brokered an agreement with Univision San Diego, which allowed HISCEC promotion on-air for a full week of television coverage (8 shows) during the first month of World Cup 2010. DIÁLOGO secured Univision San Diego, San Diego’s #1 Spanish-language television station and El Latino, San Diego’s #1 Spanish-language newspaper, as official media partners of the 2010 Hispanic Business Showcase.

Twenty different bilingual news releases distributed over 10 months were disseminated to nearly 1,000 outlets nationwide and DIÁLOGO oversaw various media interviews for the President of HISCEC. On each interview, press release, commentary and trend story, the client was coached to deliver a message about the event and the business association. This messaging tactic directly garnered nearly 3 MM media impressions over the course of the campaign. As a result, local and national Hispanic business and general market business media picked up the story. The San Diego Business Journal ran five different stories on the event and business association. San Diego Fox affiliate Fox 5 conducted a feature broadcast on HISCEC based almost verbatim from a commentary written by DIÁLOGO for the San Diego Business Journal.

As a result of the media coverage, DIÁLOGO secured corporate sponsorships from Aflac, Liberty Mutual, Mexico Insurance Services, Sempra Energy’s SDG&E, U.S. Bank and Verizon. The word-of-mouth initiative garnered over 2 MM online Hispanic media impressions, which resulted in a flood of new small businesses joining HISCEC, doubling their membership in ten months.

Critical mass was reached in the eleventh month as endorsements from the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, San Diego Mayor, and San Diego County were secured. Moreover, DIÁLOGO brokered the participation of the National Hispanic Business Information Clearinghouse, San Diego County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Administration and ACCION San Diego as panelists and participants in the ribbon cutting for the event.

HISCEC struck cause partnerships with the Children’s Heart Foundation and Green Technology Alliance, whereby a portion of trade show proceeds would go to each cause. A special “Touch a Child’s Heart” logo was created, incorporating elements from the Children’s’ Heart Foundation branding. Direct consumer outreach included branded lobby signage at a HISCEC hosted business mixer; a video broadcast distributed through YouTube; and HISCEC branded premium giveaways for the Hispanic Business Showcase.

Nearly 10,000 audience members directly received the Children’s Heart message online. Key media placements included on Power103 Radio; one 15-minute morning-show interview on SBA Radio; write-ups in Hispanic Network Magazine, HispanicBusiness.com, La Prensa San Diego, North County Times, Portada, PODER Magazine, and others. The campaign garnered a total of 3 million media impressions.

Critical Needs:

Understand Hispanic online competitive landscape and user needs as it relates to operational tasks such as communication, e-commerce, and online marketing.
Enhance HISCEC’s brand awareness in the Hispanic business market.
Drive qualified, cost effective sponsorship leads among online Hispanics.
Provide culturally relevant HISCEC membership education to online Hispanics.

Solutions:

Conducted competitive audit and user research to understand Hispanic online small business owner landscape and online Hispanic consumer needs.
Planned, developed, optimized, pitched and placed online media across several Hispanic portals and other online channels.
Developed culturally relevant rich media editorial elements and landing pages.
Wrote articles about Hispanic business ownership topics of specific interest to Hispanics and syndicated them on major Hispanic portals.