Since I’m sharing this with you in a blog (and you’re reading it), let’s add to the success of this campaign that it also is getting some Word of Mouth marketing.

How lucky are we!?!

This Saturday, May 23, we’ll be supporting the The Saucido Slant’s first Latin music showcase at the Flamingo Cantina here in Austin. The line-up features some pretty amazing local artists that are well on their way. First up, a band fresh out of the ATX, Este Vato.  This band kicks it Cumbia-style and really brings a fresh, new sound to the music we all grew up loving. Kanko, featuring members of Charanga Cakewalk brings it like only they can. And finally, San Antone represents with Bombasta headlining the show. They bill themselves as “Urban Latino, Grassroot Politicos, Spanglish Mixologists.”

These bands represent exactly what the Latin culture is all about. We blend. We mix. We speak up. We speak out. We move. We groove. And we do it all with Latino style and flare. Experience it for yourself. Check out these bands online. See you Saturday!

Click to read the entire (and oh so fascinating) chat with Chris.

At Mercury Mambo, we’re Word Of Mouth Marketing freaks. We drink the Kool-Aid. Those companies that are doing it right are getting huge returns on their investments by building an army of evangelists.

Most of the traction that’s being seen in this arena is with General Market marketers. The prevalence of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sights and tools has brought WOM marketing to the forefront of every interactive and marketing conversation I’ve been involved in in the last year or so. What I find most interesting though, is that there are very few Hispanic marketing departments paying close attention and using the techniques.

I think there are a few reasons for this:

• Generally, Hispanic marketing departments are already trying to do more with less. There is a highly disproportionate amount of Hispanic marketing dollars being spent compared to the population and buying power.
• Traditional marketers think of WOM as experimental or “emerging” media. It’s something they can’t control, it’s something they don’t understand. Brand advertising is about shouting, you get to tell customers who you are and what to think. WOM is about a conversations. Conversations get messy and require long-term commitments.
• In general, many brand managers are risk-averse, especially in a recession. Telling your boss you want to run an experimental WOM campaign makes you stand out.  Right now, brand managers seem to want to keep a low-profile.
• WOM Marketing is a corporate commitment. It takes time and buy-in corporate-wide. This means that it takes more than a marketing department to make it happen. The customer service department needs to be on-board, the sales department needs to be on-board, as well as everyone else in the company.

Even with these challenges, Hispanic Marketing Managers should still be pushing to start developing an building a WOM strategy. Here’s why:

• Hispanics are natural WOM marketers. They’ve always shared information amongst themselves. Need a dentist? Ask your comadre. Need to know which phone card has the best price? Ask the guy at the bodega on the corner.
• Hispanics are loyal to brands that they love. Don’t believe me, ask the folks at Suavetel, Fabuloso or Colgate. The brand equity of these brand with Hispanics is amazing.
• Even though Spanish dominant Hispanics don’t have as high of an online penetration as their English speaking counterparts, they over-index on social media sites and habits. Currently, technology costs are a barrier, but in the next couple of years, the cost of access is going to keep going down. When that happens, the companies that have been investing to build an offline WOM strategy are going to take a swift lead. The conversations are going to move online and spread like wildfire.

Still not sold? Take a look at these examples:

• In-N-Out Burger - these guys are competing, and someone would argue winning, in the fast food burger battle against McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s and more. Sure, those companies have restaurants on every corner, but if you’ve ever been to an In-and-Out Burger, you’ve seen what I’m talking about. Long lines, people everywhere, T-Shirts being purchased. I mean seriously, when’s the last time you bought a McDonald’s T-shirt?? And how do we all know about In-N-Out Burger? Not from traditional media, that’s for sure. People talk about them. Watch this (Pretend you’re watching here. I’m heading over to another window on my computer monitor where I’ve got my buddy Chris who used to live in CA, but now lives in TX and I’m going to taunt him a little about In-N-Out Burger). See the results of the chat to the right (click on the chat and it will enlarge so you can read it). Try it for yourself. Ask someone you know about In-N-Out Burger. That, my friends, is the power of WOM Marketing. How does In-N-Out do it? Read a little more about it here.
• 

  People LOVE Zappos. Not because of their shoes though, because they are a great customer service company.

  Zappos - Quite simply, the folks at Zappos are WOM Marketing ninjas. They do it so well I even know the CEO’s name is Tony because he’s a Twitter friend of mine. The interesting thing about Zappos is that they don’t think of themselves as a shoe company, they think of themselves as a customer service company. And this one little tweak gives them a lot to talk about. More importantly though, it gives everyone else a lot to talk about. Check out the graphic for this blurb. I did a Twitter search for Zappos. The first tweet that popped up was about their service. This is marketing that you can’t buy.

At The Mambo, we’re determined. We are going to get our clients on board now while online Hispanic communities are still emerging. These clients have the power to merge offline coffee conversations with online consumer evangelism. These clients will be the game changers. Are you ready?

Chikita Violenta Singing at Mercury Mambo from Lynn Currie on Vimeo.

Monte Negro Visits Mercury Mambo from Lynn Currie on Vimeo.

Pilar Diaz from Lynn Currie on Vimeo.

Ceci Bastida dropped by The Mambo today for an interview with Paul Saucido of The Saucido Slant. She talks about her upcoming album and what it means to be a Latina.

Gil Gastalem - Gil has been in the music business since 1989 when he worked at an indie record shop near the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, AZ. He moved to LA in 1994 to become the tour mgr to El Vez the Mexican Elvis. He worked at the legendary A&M Records in marketing where he worked with developing acts. From there Gil has worked with everyone from David Garza, Alejandro Escovedo, Robert Rodriguez, Tito & Tarantula, Maneja Beto, Quetzal, and is now working with Monte Negro, Pilar Diaz, Charanga Cakewalk, and Lila Downs.

Cosmopolitan - an electronic, funk band with Latino Roots.

The Gin Riots - an indie band from the U.K.

Aeroplane - a Belgium based Dj – Producers duo named Stephen Fasano and Vito Deluca. Their music is a mix of psychedelic guitars, pop keys, melancholic waves, disco beats & catchy basslines.

Jennae Petersen of Green Your Decor sat down with Paul Saucido of The Saucido Slant and talked about Walmart, green living, and the election of President Obama.

Interview with Jennae Petersen of Green Your Decor from Lynn Currie on Vimeo.

Mambo’s own chef-extraordinaire Jeffrey Miller did the catering, Paul Saucido of The Saucido Slant interviewed the moms live in the Mambo Studio (interviews to be posted in the coming days) and the Mambo crew spun the screenpress to produce custom designed Mambo Tees.

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To see the rest of the photos, visit our Elevenmoms Flickr set.

Friday night in Austin. Downtown Red River, with my buddy Matt, we hit Creekside Lounge for Peligrosa All-Star’s monthly set. Creekside, a rundown punk, waste-iod bar got lit up that night with the sounds of hip-hop, Latin boogalo, Reggaeton and Cumbia. Cumbia, latin music made simple for gringos and the rhythmly challenged. The outdoor deck turned into dance-love fest with hipsters bumping into Chicanos/Tejanos, all sweaty, all devouring the fusion mixes of DJ Orion, Manolo Black, Hobo D and Pagame. Then it hit me, I think between my 6^th or 7^th beer, Austin is the Cumbia capital of the States!

Read the rest of the article on LaBandaElastica.com

Note: Since I’m one of the panelists for Latino Digital Drive: Why This Audience Matters I’ll be at that one for sure.

Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody
Room 18BCD
Friday, March 13th
5:00 pm - 6:00 pm

What your Startup Can Learn from Barack Obama and Howard Dean
Room 9
Saturday, March 14th

11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Not the Same Old Story
Room Hilton C
Saturday, March 14th

Crash the Server — How to Market your Movie by Achieving Webisode Awesomeness
Room 12AB
Saturday, March 14th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Profit By Mobilizing Your Online Community or Marketplace
Room 10
Saturday, March 14th
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!
Room 18BCD
Saturday, March 14th
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Making Whuffie: Raising Social Capital in Online Communities
Room C
Sunday, March 15th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Branded Entertainment: Brands Driving Content
Room 12AB
Sunday, March 15th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Presenting Straight to the Brain
Room A
Monday, March 16th
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content
Room Hilton A
Monday, March 16th
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Ultimate Showdown of Content Management System Destiny
Room Hilton B
Monday, March 16th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Old Man Nielsen vs. New Market Research
Room 10
Monday, March 16th
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Brand Noir: Crafting a Who-Why-How Dunnit
Room 9
Tuesday, March 17th
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Latino Digital Drive: Why This Audience Matters
Room Hilton A
Tuesday, March 17th
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Building Strong Online Communities
Room A
Tuesday, March 17th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Location Location Location: The Future of Mobile Advertising
Room C
Tuesday, March 17th
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

An in-depth look at the growing Latin music market, why this demographic represents an alluring audience, who and how they should be targeted and in what language. What’s the secret and should there be an English crossover? More and more artist are noticing this community - even Beyonce singing in Spanish.

I’ll be sharing the mic with some brilliant folks. If it’s something you’re interested in and you’ll be here or SXSW, come see us!

I have never blogged before in my entire life!  Being a senior citizen, I was never really inspired nor did I see the need, until now.  A recent experience at work has excited me to the point that I felt I HAD to blog!

I have always loved coming to work every day at Mercury Mambo because we have such a fun, relaxed atmosphere.  We are led by 3 amazing women, who not only know what they are doing -  they also know, respect and appreciate what we are all doing.  They seem to have a talent for appreciating the talents of others.

Having said all of that, the event that compelled me to blog was this:

I was asked to participate in a team of four other Mambo employees to create an idea for a project for one of our largest clients.  Everyone in the company participated.  The project was made into a competition!   At first, I really didn’t want to participate, but fortunately was not given a choice.  All teams were very diverse and made up of individuals from different departments.

Yes, little old me, the senior citizen, bean counting, fanatical numbers lady got to work on a team with creatives!!  What an experience!  As our team met, ideas began to roll!  I learned that there must be some little creative person hidden deep inside my soul just waiting to get out!  My team even decided to use my idea for our project!!  What a thrill!  They picked my idea!  My team did not win, but it was OK with me.  What a great experience!  (Old dogs CAN learn new tricks!) There were so many amazing ideas that came out of the exercise.

The part that is so amazing to me is that the partners of this company recognize that good ideas can come from anyone.  What a brilliant way to get the creative juices going.  Just another way for them to recognize publicly that every employee, from the newest intern to the most senior employee has value and can contribute!  What an exciting way to get opinions and ideas from a wide variety of ages and ethnic and cultural backgrounds.

That’s my blog!  It wasn’t too hard!  I just want the world to know what an amazing place Mercury Mambo is and this seemed to be the easiest way to get the story out!

Sandy,
Sr. Bean Counter

During my most recent stroll, I noticed a perfectly set end cap display promoting El Chavo dolls and games. It was so perfect that I wish I knew who to give props to because they should know that my Tar-Jay did a great job at placing this culturally relevant display in a major alley and not at the back of the store.

El Chavo is a cultural icon dating back to the 70s and offers many fond memories for many generations. After a bit of research, it turns out that Fundex launched this campaign around Three Kings Day, supporting the animated series on Univision.

Wow - what a legacy El Chavo has had. Now thanks to Target, his humor and heritage lives on and will totally become relevant for my son’s generation.

In honor of Matt’s new celebrity status, we sat down with him over IM for an interview.

Links of interest from the interview:

• Twitteros.net
• TwitterMoms.com
• Department of Eagles
• Friendly Fires
• Pilar Diaz

Thanks to fellow Mambito PHig for the great idea of holding the interview over IM.

A new generation.  Literally.  The presidency actually skipped a generation into something America has never seen before.

Heck.  Obama is the first wired president after fighting to keep his Blackberry.

Perhaps it was because of his interaction with students at the collegiate level.  He “gets it.”  Just like my other peers “get it.”

Here’s what they “get”:

1. Technology.  Look past Facebook and Myspace.  Look past Flickr and Twitter.  Those are the basics to my generation.  Ours is one that will use open-source coding and build new technologies from that.  A new renaissance if you will (a la Rushkoff) built on transparency.  Collaboration trumps competition.
2. Culture.  One where you’ll hear bhangra music mixed to salsa beats.  It’s already happened.  Just watch the end of Slumdog Millionaire.  One where acculturation is unheard of.  One where an identifier, such as Latino, will only be a foundation to the rest of the cultures they’ll experience.  It’ll make more sense to integrate segments into one campaign and not differet ones.
3. Business.  Customers instead of consumers.  People instead of targets.  Innovation will perk interest.  Sure, you can still tailor cultural cues, but a focus will be on the product and THEN the message (back to the basics of business).  Corporations will have to be invited into our lives.  But, the ends far outweigh the means.  Just be real.
4. Music.  Sure.  Pop music will always exist.  It’s a natural occurrence.  However, it was built on false scarcity.  That is, until the internet came along.  Music tastes have been opened up, shared, and redistributed (for free).
5. Language.  Aside from short-hand texting, neologisms (new words) will form at a faster rate.  What’s more, these words will be taken from other languages.  American English will transform.

This is just a slight slice of insight into my generation.  Stay tuned.  Or, just search Google.

What do I mean, you ask?

Well, one of the first things that any agency should do when a client approaches them is ask the following:

• Why are they in business?
• What is their point of difference if there is a competitive market?

This is what we like to call a company’s purpose.  Not a mission statement.  Mission statements are outdated and often used to quell shareholders‘ fears.

Here is a good to-do list that we often use in-house when putting together a bottom-up marketing plan for our clients:

1. What is our client’s purpose?
2. How does this fit into the context of our client’s customers‘ lives? This is a really important factor. It’s a human factor. Too often, agencies and clients want people to think about their products 24/7, when the greatest impact is when they actually use your product and at the point-of-sale.
3. How does this marketing plan match up with cultural nuances? Once you find out what that human factor is, coil the plan to match up with cultural nuances of your customers.  This is where an agency can show its difference on insights.

Company purpose will almost definitely drive a customer to step back and think as to why they are buying/using your product.  It’s really as simple as that.

Think of the purpose as the brain and the marketing/creative execution as the arms, fingers, finger-nails, and nail polish (of course, to add that zing to the look!).

Cup O’ Mambo’s most popular words used in the last 20 posts!

If you have a blog, you can make the same type of image using Wordle!

You have let your customers of the Latino persuasion down. Particularly, yours truly. The reason I chose your service over Sirius was due to the great amount of Latin stations that you had.

Seriously, you had 5 really neat, distinct channels: Fuego (reggaeton), Viva (latin pop), Aguila (regional mexican/tejano on Sundays), Caliente (mostly salsa/merengue), and Caricia (latin oldies).

Now, after your merger with el perrito, all you have is Caliente that mashes everything together. And TWO French stations (see below). I don’t think that you’ll be hearing, “Bonjour, señor” anytime soon from Latinos.

However, the way you’re headed, you’ll be hearing “Au revoire, XM!”. Let us know if you’d like any help in reaching back out to people like me. We’d love to show you how word-of-mouth can better (rather than taint) your service.

Saludos,
Matt

P.S.: Having your call center in Bangalore tell me that my input into why I want to cancel my service will not reach management is bad word-of-mouth and horrible customer relationship management.