Hyundai Motor Launches Ad Campaign for Hispanics

Orange County Business Journal, Jul 28-Aug 3, 2008 by Bellantonio, Jennifer

Orange County Register Redesigns Online Real Estate Site; Brea Co. Teams With Stamps.com

MEDIA & MARKETING

Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc. recently launched a Hispanic advertising campaign.

It's one of the automaker's first under Patricia Romero, who came on board as national manager of multicultural marketing in October.

The advertising is aimed at getting Latino customers to better understand the Hyundai brand.

Hyundai, part of South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co., has a 2.7% share of Hispanic car sales, according to trade publication Advertising Age.

"Often Hispanic campaigns are direct (translations), with no Hispanic insights and just adapted language-wise," Romero recently told Advertising Age.

The work, dubbed "Descúbrelo tú mismo" (discover it for yourself) was created by Austin, Texas-based LatinWorks Marketing Inc., which won Hyundai's national Hispanic marketing and advertising account in a shootout last year.

The campaign includes a television spot and a Spanish-language Web site that plays up the words safety, reliability and design.

Online Real Estate

Santa Ana-based Orange County Register Communications Inc. revamped its real estate Web site to make it easier to navigate and search home listings.

The company, which publishes the Orange County Register and other publications and Web sites, said it changed the design so people can narrow down their search parameters and find deeper demographic information about OC cities, such as population, education levels and average household incomes.

The site also has Google maps and 360-degree views of neighborhoods.

To promote the changes the Register is holding a contest, which ends Thursday. Readers can fill out an entry form online and the winner gets $500 to spend on home improvement.

The changes come on the heels of an earlier redesign, where the real estate site added an e-mail newsletter and content about apartments and foreclosures.

To entice advertisers, the Register daily paper offered frequency incentives and pricing breaks to real estate agents, builders and other advertisers.

Plus, these advertisers were offered online services, such as search engine marketing, search engine optimization and pay-perclick, to expand their ad campaigns.

These moves are part of the paper's push to try to recapture some sales lost by the downturn in the housing market, which caused a drop in real estate-related ads.

Online Postage

A Brea-based division of Pasadena's Avery Dennison Corp. has expanded its offering by hooking up with Los Angelesbased Stamps.com Inc.

Avery's office products group inked a deal with Stamps.com to allow small businesses and other people to print postage online using Avery's self-adhesive labels.

Avery Dennison, which makes labels, retail tags and other office products, is marketing and promoting the new PC Postage service.

Best of Local

Irvine-based Local.com Corp., a search site and network, is shaking it up to get its name out.

The company recently launched an awards program where people can vote on the "Best of Local" businesses in 15 cities and 20 categories across the U.S. until Oct. 31.

Winners of the online contest will be announced on Dec. 1 and will get some publicity through window decals for their stores, promotions next to their business listings and more.

To promote the competition, Local.com is holding a weekly drawing where people can get a chance to win a $500 American Express gift card by writing a review of a local business.

Bits and Pieces

Newport Beach-based Blue C Advertising is on the hunt for a graphic designer ... Cox Communications Inc. in Rancho Santa Margarita partnered up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to limit the distribution of child pornography. Under the deal, Cox agrees not to provide service to servers that host Web sites with child pornography. Plus, Cox will report these sites to authorities. Cox already uses an independent third-party provider to block access to known child pornography hosted on newsgroups ... Arizona-based Sprouts Farmers Market LLC is busy promoting its new stores here. The company recently opened a 24,248-square-foot store in Tustin and expects to open another in Seal Beach in September. Sprouts also has a store in Irvine ... Juxt Interactive Inc. in Newport Beach recently finished making Web sites for several clients, including Coca-Cola Co.'s Cheny Coke ... Cream-colored knit jackets and pants and white satin blouses are among the fashions that Irvine-based St. John Knits International Inc. is rolling out for its spring 2009 collection. The apparel maker hosted a runway show last week promoting the line at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa (see story page 6).

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