Hispanic Public Relations Blog

Following is the third and final part of the interview with Kimberly Bow Sundy, manager of PR and multicultural marketing for General Mills.

TeleNoticias:  What trends do you see in Hispanic PR?

Kim Sundy:  For us, the trends here are really all about engagement.  The trends are all about how can we continue to evolve with an evolving consumer segment.  Again, it’s all about youth marketing.  How do you continue to have relevant dialogue?  I think one of the big challenges is that many of the consumers we deal with are acculturating to life in the United States and their kids are first-generation Hispanic consumers.  Those are two different consumption patterns, two different habits.

How are you relevant to mom and her kids when they’re in two different places?  Everything we go out with has to have that dual marketing strategy:  conversations with acculturating moms and with their bicultural kid, who one day will be a first-generation consumer.  It’s about continuing to evolve your marketing in a way that’s relevant to their dynamic needs.

TN:  How does that complexity impact what you do?

KS:  We look at different marketing levers for different levels of acculturation, and I think PR is a truly phenomenal lever for people who are acculturated.  Public relations really provides you the opportunity to educate a consumer.  Our brands are not widely available in Latin America or countries of origin for many of the people who are acculturating.  So PR is really the most efficient and effective tool for educating consumers about our brand, and the points of difference that they may have against other products that exist in the marketplace.

There are things like community papers, a tremendous part of our PR strategy, engaging with consumers in those community papers.  And there are strategies that we focus on that complement both audiences, like the Univision partnership that we had with Karla Martinez.  We have a spokesperson like Karla who can help communicate the benefits of our brand to both consumer segments.

Television is something that’s especially appealing to all consumers whether they’re acculturated or not acculturated.  We look at different ways to deliver a relevant message for each person in their acculturation process.

Magazines are another medium that come to mind as something very relevant to someone who is acculturating, since they often provide a lot of tips and ideas, whether it’s “What Happens in a Teacher Conference” or “What if My Teacher Threatens Me,” or “My Children Asked Me for Turkey for Thanksgiving and We Eat Ham!  What Do They Want From Me?”

We try to segment our marketing so as to offer relevant content to consumers, in the way that they’re most predisposed to receiving it so as to complement their needs.

TN:  If there was something you could change in Hispanic PR, what would that be?

KS:  To be honest with you, I am very happy and proud of all we’ve done so far.  I think we’ve been very fortunate because consumers have really loved the campaigns that we’ve done, and the benefit of doing public relations is that people respond to you in real time.  It’s been great for me because I feel like it’s a very agile marketing lever.

If there’s something people don’t like, we’re able to fix it and try it again.  And we have built our program on five or six criteria that help us determine whether our programs are working or not.  One of them is emotional appeal.  If we can boost consumer perception of General Mills, and make it emotionally engaging, we’ve done our job.

I hope that consumers will continue to be engaged with General Mills in that honest sincere dialogue.  It’s really worked well for us.  I love hearing from people whether in the field, an email or a letter on what they think about what we’re doing.

For me it’s cool because when I go downstairs to the [company] kitchen, we have this conference room that has all these pictures of Betty Crocker over the years.  Every time I go down there and think about it, I think ‘It’s so cool to do Hispanic marketing today, in this day and age.’  Because the conversation that we have with Hispanic consumers is probably very close to the conversation my grandmother had with Betty Crocker.  We can offer tips, ideas or general advice about how they can improve their family lives.  It makes working on a project like Que Rica Vida, where PR is  one of the key drivers of that conversation, really neat.  It allows us to be to Hispanic consumers what Betty Crocker was to general market consumers 50 years ago.

TN:  How you measure ROI?  What kind of criteria do you use to see whether a campaign’s worked?

KS:  As I mentioned, we have a six-segment criteria.  There’s program originality: is what we’re doing different than what other people are doing, yes or no?  Sometimes you’ll see repeat campaigns in the marketplace.  If it’s not original, then we need to try harder.

Is it culturally relevant, something truly relevant to this audience?  And that goes for Hispanics or African-Americans.

Does it have emotional appeal?

Is it engaging with the consumer?  Does it motivate someone to engage with us?  If it does, then it works.  If it doesn’t, then we have to try again, refine it and make sure it’s better.

Is it newsworthy?  Is the press interested in talking about it?  With a news release, we can tell right away whether something is newsworthy or needs to be tweaked, based on the media response and bloggers’ responses.

And then obviously, is the message effective?  When we are looking at the content of the coverage that we’re getting, are people communicating the same message back, whether it’s consumers or media?  If not, then we need to make it better.

Those are the six criteria, and I will say that last year’s campaign delivered something like 256 million impressions.  It was insane.  So we have had tremendous success with delivering media impressions.

I think for us the next evolution, the next place to go with measurement and evaluation, is sticking to that six-segment matrix, and making sure the campaigns that we put out continue to deliver against those objectives, because I think that’s a good filter.  By running things through that filter, our campaigns have delivered a high number of media impressions, and they also cause consumers to respond back.

Beyond that, we want to try to engage consumers more and be part of an organic conversation.  In the near future, we will start to measure our success based against the conversations we’re having with consumers, and the depth of those conversations.  That will put us in line with the digital priorities I discussed earlier.

TN: Kim, thank you so much for your time.

Tags: Acculturation, Brand, culture, Hispanic, HispanicPR, public relations, Que Rica Vida

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