1

 1 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

 2

 3

 4 I N D E X

 5

 6

 7 PRESENTER: PAGE

 8 CAROLYN SHANOFF (Opening) 3

 9 JEFFREY PASSEL 6

 10 J. HOWARD BEALES 160

 11

 12

 13 PANEL DISCUSSION: PAGE

 14 1) Perspectives on the

 15 Hispanic Market 19

 16

 17 2) Effective Communications

 18 with Hispanic Audiences 94

 19

 20

 21

 22

 23

 24

 25

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 2

 1 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

 2

 3 In the Public Workshop on: )

 4 )

 5 THE HISPANIC CONSUMER: )

 6 PROMOTING OURTEACH, PREVENTING )

 7 FRAUD: )

 8 BEST PRACTICES IN THE HISPANIC )

 9 COMMUNITY )

 10 -------------------------------)

 11

 12 MAY 12, 2004

 13

 14 Conference Room A

 15 Federal Trade Commission

 16 601 New Jersey Avenue, NW

 17

 18 The above-entitled matter workshop commenced

 19 on Wednesday, May 12, 2004, at 12:55 p.m

 20

 21

 22

 23

 24

 25

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 3

 1 P R O C E E D I N G S

 2 MS. SHANOFF: I think we're a couple minutes

 3 late in starting so we should get going. Isn't this

 4 great? Thank you, everyone, for coming. Good

 5 afternoon. I am really thrilled to welcome you to the

 6 FTC's conference center to start out and to this

 7 Hispanic Outreach Forum.

 8 Today's session opens what we think and what

 9 promises to be a terrific, terrific event, one that

 10 focuses on creative approaches to outreach and law

 11 enforcement in order to help protect Hispanic consumers

 12 from fraud.

 13 I am Carolyn Shanoff. I've met some of you. I

 14 hope later to get a chance to meet everyone. I'm

 15 Associate Director for Consumer and Business Education

 16 here at the FTC, and like you, I am really looking

 17 forward to these sessions and the exchange of

 18 information and the benefit of all of your experience

 19 and expertise and opinions.

 20 Clearly, the Hispanic market is a high growth

 21 market, more and more attractive to marketers and the

 22 media, which have products and entertainment to sell,

 23 more and more attractive to federal, state and local

 24 government agencies, which have important information to

 25 impart.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 4

 1 At the same time, I think, it's safe to say it's

 2 more and more attractive to scam artists who have

 3 fraudulent business opportunities to promote, miracle

 4 weight loss products to peddle, questionable financial

 5 products to push.

 6 We'll be hearing from marketers, journalists, and

 7 representatives of government agencies about the issues

 8 that the Hispanic consumers regard as most important,

 9 what sources of information are the most trusted and

 10 generally which outreach practices can be most

 11 successful.

 12 Today's lineup starts with a look at the

 13 demographic aspects of the Latino market by Jeff

 14 Passel. Jeff, raise your hand.

 15 Jeff is Principal Research Associate at the

 16 Urban Institute. His research focuses on immigration

 17 policy, the demography and adaptation of immigrants and

 18 the measurements of immigration. Before joining the

 19 Institute, Jeff directed the Census Bureau's program of

 20 population estimates and projections and its research on

 21 demographic methods for measuring census undercount.

 22 He's a frequent advisor to associations and

 23 government agencies ranging from the CIA to the National

 24 Institutes Of Health, and the author of a number of

 25 books as well as articles on Mexican migration and

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 5

 1 population projections, among other subjects.

 2 Now, before Jeff speaks and we get ourselves

 3 back on our time line, I would like to pass along a few

 4 house rules and reminders, so listen carefully. If you

 5 leave the building and try to reenter, you'll need to go

 6 through security screening again. For security reasons,

 7 we need for you to wear your name tag at all times and

 8 would caution that you if you notice anything

 9 suspicious, please report it to the guards in the lobby.

 10 Please turn off your phones and pagers or set

 11 them to vibrate. We need to let you know that the fire

 12 exits are through the main doors at the front of the

 13 building on New Jersey Avenue or through the pantry area

 14 and into the corridor and out on to G Street. I think

 15 that that's that direct.

 16 In the event of an emergency or a drill, please

 17 proceed with FTC staff to the Union Labor Life Building

 18 diagonally across Massachusetts Avenue. You'll see

 19 large groups of people. Follow them.

 20 The bathrooms are located across the lobby, and

 21 finally, a word to panelists, when you would like to

 22 speak, please turn your name card on end as a signal to

 23 your moderator that you would like to say something.

 24 Now, it gives me great pleasure to introduce

 25 Jeff Passel from the Urban Institute to start us off.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 6

 1 Thanks very much everyone.

 2 MR. PASSEL: Thank you, Carolyn. I would like

 3 to thank the FTC for this opportunity. Let me figure

 4 out how to get my thing going here. There I go.

 5 I'm, as you heard, a demographer. We

 6 demographers like to say demography is destiny, and

 7 while that may not be entirely the case, demography and

 8 demographic aspects of populations can play a

 9 significant role in economic factors, in social factors

 10 and in a number of political factors as well.

 11 I'm sure most of you are familiar with the

 12 general themes that I'll be talking about today, but I

 13 hope to give you some concrete figures, some concrete

 14 data and some background for the rest of the discussion

 15 this afternoon.

 16 My address and email are on the last page of the

 17 handout. Feel free to contact me if you have questions

 18 or if you need more information. I work for a research

 19 organization, but we like to help people and provide

 20 information whenever we can.

 21 What I'm going to try to cover today are a

 22 number of different aspects of the Latino or the

 23 Hispanic market. I'm not a marketer, so I use the term

 24 market with some trepidation. We usually talk of

 25 populations, but first: How many Latinos are there in

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 7

 1 the United States? Where are they since you have to

 2 reach them? Some what I've called here market segments,

 3 looking at different age groups, youth, young adults,

 4 baby boomers.

 5 There are -- generations plays a role, a

 6 significant role in the Hispanic population, and I'll

 7 talk a little about that, and I focus in here on what

 8 I've learned to call purchasing power. I think of it as

 9 income, but the marketing population seems to call it

 10 purchasing power, and I'll try to look at some trends

 11 from the recent past into what we demographers call the

 12 near-term future, but for 12 to 15 years is a very long

 13 time in terms of economic factors.

 14 The Latino population is one of the fastest

 15 growing in the country, depending on how you define

 16 populations, but between 1980 and 2000, it grew by 250

 17 percent, adding a significant group of people to the

 18 country.

 19 If we think of minority populations as people

 20 who are not white non-Hispanic, the Latino population

 21 has been the largest since at least 2002, depending on

 22 how you count it.

 23 A lot of these changes have been driven by

 24 immigration over the last quarter of a century or so,

 25 and this affects a lot of characteristics of the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 8

 1 population: Its age structure, family patterns,

 2 language usage, a number of different aspects.

 3 The role of immigration in growth of the

 4 Hispanic population has increased steadily over the last

 5 20 years or so to 2000. The change that's occurred

 6 since 2000 or 2001 is that immigration has stopped

 7 increasing, but there seems to be no real slow down, so

 8 there is no post 9-11 decrease in immigration in any

 9 discernible way.

 10 The numbers are at roughly the level they were

 11 in '98, '99, 2000, but we have seen the -- the numbers

 12 have, like I said, stopped increasing, but very large

 13 numbers are still coming, and we're at the very

 14 beginning of a change here in terms of the demographic

 15 patterns within the Latino population.

 16 As this, what we demographers call the second

 17 generation and the third generation, that is, people

 18 born in the United States -- the second generation are

 19 borne in the United States to immigrant parents. The

 20 third generation and higher are born in the United

 21 States to U.S. foreign parents. More growth is coming

 22 from the second generation now than from immigration,

 23 and that's a change that we just have seen, and it has

 24 implications for the near term.

 25 Here's a couple of numbers. In 1950, there were

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 9

 1 about 4 million people that we would now call Latinos in

 2 the United States. By 2000 that was up to 35 million,

 3 so very rapid growth.

 4 My projections, and these are similar to the

 5 ones the Census Bureau has done, I like to think mine

 6 are a little bit better, but they're not that different,

 7 project the numbers out to roughly a hundred million or

 8 about 25 percent of the population by 2050.

 9 In looking at these, it's not clear what we will

 10 mean in 50 years by the Latino population, and that's a

 11 significant factor that's not built into these

 12 projections. These assume that this population is what

 13 we mean by the Latino population today.

 14 It could make -- because of intermarriage

 15 patterns, it could be substantially bigger or

 16 substantially smaller with basically the same underlying

 17 demography, just depending on how people choose to

 18 identify it.

 19 This line is the black population, and you can

 20 see it crossed around 2000, 2001, and the black

 21 population will continue to grow but nowhere nearly as

 22 fast as the Latino population.

 23 I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this.

 24 This is the generational composition of the population.

 25 The blue at the bottom is the share of the Latino

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 10

 1 population that immigrant constitutes. The red is the

 2 share in the second generation, and the yellow is third

 3 and higher.

 4 And you can see from 1970 to 1990 a steady

 5 increase in the share of the population that was made up

 6 of immigrants, and post 2000 with these projections, the

 7 number -- the number continues to increase, but the

 8 share that is made up by immigrants starts decreasing

 9 slightly, and that slack is picked up by the second

 10 generation.

 11 The handout has some more detailed information

 12 on the age structure. One of the things about the

 13 second generation, U.S. born children of immigrants is

 14 that it's a very young population. It has a median age

 15 of about 12 right now, but it's going to be growing

 16 rapidly over the next 20, 25 years.

 17 The Latino population historically has been very

 18 concentrated, and it still is to a very great degree.

 19 What I call on the handout and in the maps the historic

 20 core, the five states in the southeast, California,

 21 Texas, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico. There is a big

 22 concentration in the New York City area, New York-New

 23 Jersey, in Florida and in Illinois, concentrated around

 24 Miami and Chicago.

 25 Those areas had about 85 to 89 percent of the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 11

 1 Latino population for most of the last 30 years. That

 2 began to change in the 1990s, late 1980s, but really the

 3 mid 1990s it's really accelerated. Two things

 4 happened.

 5 One is that Latinos were moving out of the core

 6 areas into new areas in different parts of the country.

 7 New communities began to emerge, and that affected the

 8 flow of immigrants. In the late 80s, early 90s,

 9 immigrants would go from California to Texas and then

 10 move from California to North Carolina or from

 11 California to Iowa.

 12 By the late 1990s, those migration streams,

 13 particularly from Mexico, started going straight into

 14 these new areas, so we have these new communities

 15 emerging with the growth being fed by new immigration

 16 streams, and the momentum towards these has picked up,

 17 with the population more than doubling in the 1990s,

 18 outside of the core areas.

 19 This map just shows the growth. The solid red

 20 are the States with the faster proportion of growth in

 21 the Latino population between '90 and 2000. Those seven

 22 states in the southeastern U.S. and Nevada, the Latino

 23 population more than tripled between '90 and 2000, in

 24 some cases from small numbers, but still.

 25 The red and white states, those 16 states, the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 12

 1 numbers more than doubled in the 1990s, so you can see

 2 this spreading out occurring on this map with a few of

 3 the core areas having fairly rapid proportion of

 4 growth: Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Illinois also

 5 growing rapidly.

 6 This chart takes these areas and puts some

 7 population numbers on them, so you can see here the

 8 numbers in California increased quite a bit between '90

 9 and 2003. It's just that the rate of growth was not as

 10 fast as in other parts of the country, and what I think

 11 is interesting is the area outside of the nine core

 12 states, the number grew by 144 percent, increasing from a

 13 little over 3 million to almost 8 million outside of

 14 these traditional settlement areas.

 15 In thinking of the Latino market, I'm going to

 16 focus here on the demographic aspects of it and some of

 17 the economic aspects. There's obviously a lot more to

 18 think about. There's issues of culture. There's issues

 19 of language, and what exactly do we mean when we talk

 20 about a market. I'm going to leave that to people who

 21 know a lot more about that than I do and talk about some

 22 of the things that I do know about.

 23 The market itself is shaped by income, how much,

 24 how big is the income, what share of the natural income

 25 Latinos have, how fast is it growing, the size of the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 13

 1 market, how many people and how much income and where.

 2 So we've seen here, in what I presented so far,

 3 rapid population growth, where the numbers are

 4 increasing, new markets developing geographically with

 5 the dispersal. What you'll see when I show you this is

 6 that the Latinos generally have low incomes, but the

 7 income is increasing rapidly for a number of reasons,

 8 partly if we think of the aggregate income, more people

 9 means more income.

 10 We also are seeing fairly sizeable growth in

 11 family income, and then a couple of other factors. I've

 12 looked specifically at education, and there's some

 13 charts in the handout on education. Education in the

 14 United States is very, very strongly related to income,

 15 and actually this shows it.

 16 The left-hand bars look at generations: Recent

 17 immigrants, long-term immigrants, second and third

 18 generation, and you can see for the Latino population a

 19 fairly steady progression of improving incomes with

 20 generation, with time in the U.S., but at levels quite a

 21 bit below those of the white non-Hispanic population.

 22 On the right-hand side I have four broad

 23 education categories, and you can see both for Latinos

 24 and the white population a tremendous relationship

 25 between education and income, very, very much higher

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 14

 1 incomes for college graduates than for people who have

 2 not completed high school.

 3 There's a big gap, and the size of that actually

 4 surprised me when I ran these numbers, between Latinos

 5 and whites. Part of it due to things that are not

 6 controlled for in there. The white population tends to

 7 have more advanced degrees. They tend to be a little

 8 bit older. They tend to have more experience. They

 9 tend not to have language issues, but part of it, at

 10 least 20 percent of that gap I think is due to other

 11 factors which may be discrimination and other things,

 12 but that's not the topic.

 13 The key thing is this change with education, and

 14 there is an interesting thing going on in the Latino

 15 population that's going to lead to higher incomes

 16 because basically over the next 10 to 50 years, there's

 17 going to be a shift of the population into higher income

 18 groupings.

 19 A higher percentage of Latinos will be in the

 20 second and third generation, as I showed you before, so

 21 that's going to lead to higher incomes. The new Latinos

 22 coming into the work force have much better, much, much

 23 higher levels of education than the older people leaving

 24 the work force, so the overall working -- work force is

 25 going to be improving in education just through this

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 15

 1 sort of aging process.

 2 In addition, a higher percentage -- in addition

 3 there are improvements in education. That's another

 4 strong factor, and we see that, and then we see the

 5 shift within the work force into more in the second and

 6 third generation, so all of those factors lead to higher

 7 incomes in both the near term and the longer term.

 8 Just to put some numbers on this, in 2002, the

 9 last year that I have income data for, estimated about

 10 $600 billion in purchasing power in the Latino

 11 population. That's about 7 and a half percent of the

 12 U.S. total, and we can see that the income difference I

 13 just showed you worked through here because Latinos are

 14 about 14 percent of the overall population.

 15 However, we see very rapid growth for the 2000

 16 to 2005 period that would project 55 percent income

 17 growth in Latinos in that period, in purchasing power,

 18 higher than the growth in purchasing powers for whites,

 19 blacks and Asians, and the projections out beyond this

 20 suggest about 60 percent growth every five years.

 21 That's about 10 percent annual increase in

 22 purchasing power, and that's a number I think to people

 23 in marketing and people interested in markets means

 24 something significant.

 25 The shares projected to reach about 11 percent

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 16

 1 by 2015, and the overall purchasing power, my

 2 projections, Latinos will pass blacks next year. The

 3 white share -- although the number increases, the share

 4 of the total drops to about three quarters.

 5 This is just -- this puts some numbers on it,

 6 and the projection out to 2015, that's almost $2

 7 trillion in purchasing power in the Latino population by

 8 2015, and as I said, this is the share of the U.S.

 9 total. It's gone from about 6 percent in '96 to about 7

 10 and a half percent as I said, and this projection has it

 11 go up to 11 percent, and that's from population growth

 12 but also income growth.

 13 I'll try to do this quickly. This looks at

 14 the -- just in terms of the long-run, and this is very

 15 long-run, as I said Latinos are projected to reach about

 16 a quarter of the population. All of the population

 17 groups we project will be getting older.

 18 In the short run is what I'm going to talk

 19 about. There's some significant changes in age

 20 structure, and the Latino population growth patterns are

 21 quite different from the overall numbers.

 22 These are a little complicated. I'll just talk

 23 about one and then pull the highlights out. The

 24 left-hand panel is the population age 12 to 17 broken

 25 down by race group, and the Hispanic population is this

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 17

 1 bluish purple or whatever color that is. It's blue on

 2 my screen. I'm not sure what that is.

 3 The right-hand panel is the change over the

 4 five-year period from 2000 to 2005, so Latinos are 15

 5 percent of the 12 to 17 year olds in 2000, 17 percent in

 6 2005. If we look at the overall change, we see an

 7 additional 600,000 Latinos, a subtraction of about a

 8 hundred thousand whites, so you can see that.

 9 Actually for the next two five-year periods,

 10 overall the population is projected to decrease, but the

 11 Latino population increases in both of those, so in this

 12 segment of this age group, we see a significant increase

 13 in Latino representation over a fairly short period of

 14 time for us demographers anyway.

 15 This is the 18 to 24s, fairly rapid growth for

 16 Latinos projected over the next 15 years. There's a big

 17 increase between 2000 and 2005 in whites, but after that

 18 the Latinos constitute virtually all of the growth in

 19 the population in this sort of labor force entry group.

 20 This is the one I think is most interesting for

 21 a lot of reasons. This is the 25 to 44. This is family

 22 formation group. This is first time home buyers, people

 23 with kids in school, a really significant market group,

 24 and we see a steady increase in Latino share, numbers

 25 and share from 14 percent to 20 percent.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 18

 1 Again virtually all of the change -- actually

 2 between 2000 and 2005 this overall group is projected to

 3 get smaller, but Latinos are projected to add 1.9

 4 million into this fairly large age group. Whites are

 5 projected to lose 4.3 million, so for the next 15 years,

 6 this age group is going to see sizeable increments of

 7 Latinos where overall there's not much growth at all.

 8 The sort of corollary of that is the baby boom

 9 group, the what to 64. This is a group that's growing

 10 at least through 2015, and a lot of this is coming from

 11 the white population. Latinos add a fairly steady,

 12 million, million and a quarter into this group, but it's

 13 a rather small segment, again 8 to 11 percent of this

 14 group versus 14 to 17 percent of the overall

 15 population.

 16 So the dynamics are a bit different due to the

 17 role of immigration, the role of fertility and the

 18 demographic effects.

 19 Some major demographic changes in the country:

 20 The Latino numbers are continuing to grow, increase and

 21 have increased rather remarkably in the last

 22 generation. The share of the total we're projecting to

 23 steadily increase driven in part by immigration, but one

 24 of the key factors here is the emergence of new areas

 25 and new growth centers.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 19

 1 We see a generational shift coming as the second

 2 generation begins to enter adulthood over the next 5 to

 3 20 years. Education levels are still lower than the

 4 overall population but are projected to improve and

 5 improve quite a bit, and that leads to a growing market

 6 share.

 7 As the income gap is reduced and the

 8 multiplicative effect of income growth and population

 9 growth creates a very, very rapidly growing population.

 10 So I hope this will help in your deliberations

 11 for the rest of the day, and like I said you have my

 12 phone number and my Email. If there are any questions,

 13 don't hesitate to call.

 14 PANEL DISCUSSION: PERSPECTIVES ON THE HISPANIC MARKET

 15 PANEL MEMBERS:

 16 PABLO M. ZYLBERGLAIT, Acting Assistant Director,

 17 International Consumer Protection, FTC

 18 JULIA BENCOMO LOBACO, Deputy Editor, AARP Segunda

 19 Juventud, AARP

 20 GEORGE FRANCO, Chairman & CEO, National Financial

 21 Corporation

 22 J. MELVIN MUSE, Chairman & CEO, Muse Cordero Chen &

 23 Partners

 24 LUIS VASQUEZ-AJMAC, President, MAYA Advertising and

 25 Communications, Inc

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 20

 1 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Thank you, Jeff. My name is

 2 Pablo Zylberglait. I work for the Commission's

 3 International Division of Consumer Protection, and I

 4 want to thank you again for something that is very

 5 sobering, and I think it does a very good job of setting

 6 up for the panel we're about to go into.

 7 If you have a few minutes later, maybe you can

 8 tell me how I can increase my purchasing power by 10

 9 percent every year because I somehow missed that. But

 10 I'm not right on the demographic here.

 11 MR. PASSEL: You just have to clone yourself.

 12 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: There you go. There's the

 13 answer.

 14 Before I introduce our distinguished panelists,

 15 I would like to give a brief idea of what it is that

 16 we're going to be talking about for the next few

 17 minutes. We have two panels today, and the first panel,

 18 we would like to focus on what we've talked about, the

 19 Hispanic/Latino market, and I don't want to offend

 20 anybody so we'll use the word indistinguishably, so my

 21 apologies if it's insensitive to anybody, but what is it

 22 that we're talking about?

 23 And just to give you an illustration that

 24 actually takes us outside of the U.S. I was talking to

 25 Julia before we started the panel, and one of the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 21

 1 advantages of my jobs is it sends me to far away places

 2 in the world, and I was in Northern Finland a few weeks

 3 ago, Lovisa, Finland, and one of the things that they

 4 were serving, I was telling Julia the story about

 5 Finland, and she cut me off and she said, Chips and g

 6 salsa.

 7 And actually no, I said reindeer quesadillas,

 8 okay. It's a very difficult-- it's easy just to say

 9 chips and salsa, but it's a very sophisticated consumer,

 10 it's a very sophisticated kind of splicing that we need

 11 to do to analyze what is it that the Hispanic Latino

 12 market entails, so the first panels is going to be about

 13 what is it that we are talking about, who is it that

 14 we're describing, and how is it that we can do a good

 15 job, a better job at communicating with this population,

 16 with this market.

 17 And I think the second panel later in the

 18 afternoon is going to focus more on once we've defined

 19 who these folks are and what this market is, how do we

 20 communicate the specific messages we're here to talk

 21 about, how to prevent fraud or get across whatever

 22 message it is you're trying to communicate.

 23 Obviously there's going to be some overlap.

 24 These are experts in the field as are the panelists in

 25 the second part of the program, so there's going to be

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 22

 1 some overlap, and there are going to be things that we

 2 are going to talk about right away that are going to

 3 deal with specific messages.

 4 Without any further adieu, let me just introduce

 5 you to our distinguished panelists. I'm going to try to

 6 go in order from my right outwardly.

 7 Julia Bencomo Lobaco is deputy editor of AARP's

 8 Segunda Juventud, which is AARP's bilingual publication

 9 for Hispanics 50 plus. She has more than 20 years as a

 10 bilingual editor, reporter and columnist.

 11 George Franco is a member of the Board of

 12 directors of the U.S. Spanish Chamber of Commerce. He's

 13 chairman and CEO of National Financial Corporation.

 14 He's also the CEO of Avente Research, a member of the

 15 Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Advisory Council, and he

 16 currently serves as chairman also of the National

 17 Council on Financial Access based here in Washington,

 18 D.C.

 19 Jo Muse leads Muse, Cordero, Chen & Partners by

 20 specializing in reaching multicultural consumers. As

 21 the agency's executive creative director, he oversees

 22 the creative development of advertising. He is active

 23 in various professional organizations and community

 24 organizations, including the American Association of

 25 Advertising Agencies, and he's also the author of the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 23

 1 "The Shaman Chronicles: The Seven Senses of

 2 Multicultural Marketing."

 3 And I knew we were on to something when we asked

 4 Jo to be on our panel when I saw Joe's web site, and he

 5 quotes the cartoon character Super Chicken, which means

 6 he must be in touch with pop culture. He must have his

 7 finger on the pulse.

 8 Finally, and I hope this is correct because he

 9 came in a little late, is Luis Vasquez.

 10 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: That is me. No impostors

 11 here.

 12 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Good, good, because the

 13 National Association of Realtors was the other building.

 14 He is president and founder of MAYA Advertising

 15 & Communications and has more than 20 years of

 16 experience in Hispanic marketing and minority outreach.

 17 So how about a good welcome applause for our

 18 panelists.

 19 (Applause.)

 20 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Let us jump right into this

 21 after hearing all these numbers and talking about this

 22 Hispanic markets, final examine in a demographic class.

 23 The U.S. Hispanic market is very diverse in

 24 terms of geography, income, ethnicity in language. How

 25 do these differences in English proficiency as well as

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 24

 1 Spanish literacy, ethnicity, varying levels of

 2 education, and geography give us insight about Hispanic

 3 consumer trends, sort of like the $55,000 question.

 4 Does anybody want to throw the first stone I

 5 guess?

 6 MR. MUSE: Here's a thought. By defining the

 7 Hispanic market, and obviously that's a governmental

 8 monitor that encompasses a great deal, perhaps way too

 9 much cultural and ethnic differences than we should

 10 tackle today, but understandably when you try to create

 11 a kind of homogeneous outlook in a population, you don't

 12 take into account the trends and differences and

 13 migrations of attitudes and behavior.

 14 I think when you try to find a single answer to

 15 the question, how do we decipher, how do we understand

 16 this marketplace, we have to recognize that our

 17 understanding is simplistic. It's not defined like

 18 wisdom. It's kind of what we make up as we go along the

 19 way.

 20 So one of the things that we like to do in our

 21 place, given that we reach out to multicultural

 22 audiences of many different demographies and

 23 ethnicities, we like to take a look at the commonality

 24 of audiences, so where many of us at this table would

 25 define Hispanic consumers to be consumers who speak

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 25

 1 Spanish, for example, we recognize that over 50 percent

 2 of this huge marketplace likes to enjoy their media

 3 through non Spanish speaking audiences.

 4 Now, there's a great deal said and will be said

 5 perhaps today about that bulk of the audience, the other

 6 50 percent in terms of the Hispanic marketing, Spanish-

 7 language interests, but we like to think that other 50

 8 percent is the part of the marketplace that's really

 9 going to really create trends that impact what happens

 10 in America for years to come.

 11 So one way of defining my answer to your

 12 question is you cannot categorize Latinos or any ethnic

 13 group in a way that makes them seem like they exist in

 14 these hermetically sealed envelopes. It just ain't the

 15 case, and I know my demographer friend would admit that

 16 one of the fastest growing ethnicities in this country

 17 are the people who check the box "other."

 18 So whoever the others are are going to start to

 19 define themselves differently so the market itself based

 20 on our 1970s, 60s definition of Hispanic means little if

 21 you don't define yourself that way. You may define

 22 yourself very differently.

 23 So for the sense of this panel, we're going to

 24 be very linear, but I'm just kind of opening up the

 25 opportunity to look at things quite differently.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 26

 1 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I would like to throw in my

 2 two cent cobbles to that. I think one of the key things

 3 that I would ask you all to think about, and I know it's

 4 an overused phrase, but think out of the box.

 5 What that means is one size does not fit all.

 6 Yeah, we can talk about regions or political LAs.

 7 They're very different, but one size does not fit all.

 8 What we've noticed as a tread at MAYA is more

 9 and more people are niche marketing. Reaching out to

 10 middle aged men like me is way different than reaching

 11 out to hiphops than to Latino soccer moms than working

 12 class.

 13 I think the more important thing we've got to

 14 get beyond the issue of immigration. We are Americans.

 15 There's a word called Latino Americano, which means one

 16 of Latino American origin, so let's think about, first

 17 of all, we are Americans, and I think that's part of the

 18 thinking out of the box.

 19 And I think the other thing is, yes, never more

 20 so. Take advantage of the fact that we are bilingual,

 21 take advantage of the fact that we speak Spanish,

 22 English and in some cases Spanglish.

 23 One of my first clients for over ten years now

 24 actually happens to be here, Kevin Kayso, formally with

 25 Pepco, and I'll just bring up something they've done

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 27

 1 very innovative. They're the utility company here.

 2 They gave us a mission, outreach to the community. I

 3 loved it. It was pretty much a blank slate, and one of

 4 the things we told them to effectively reach out to

 5 young Latinos, you've got to do it in Ingles, English,

 6 Spanish, Spanglish.

 7 The project has been overwhelming, so I guess

 8 the last point here is think out of the box. One shoe

 9 doesn't fit all.

 10 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: And I'll add my three cents

 11 worth. I think what has been stated obviously is

 12 terrific, but just to add to that, I think that not only

 13 when we look at the ethnic backgrounds and we look at

 14 geography, we need to also look at a Mexican American in

 15 California will have different purchasing habits from a

 16 Mexican American in Chicago or a Mexican American in

 17 Florida or a Mexican American, if you can find them, in

 18 New York.

 19 No, I know, I know, but I think you need to

 20 really look at that, and as an example, the Miami Herald

 21 had a story, and they mentioned that with financial --

 22 and that's a very -- an area for scams. We were talking

 23 about deceptive advertising. They were stating that in

 24 Los Angeles, a Mexican American looking at those types

 25 of products would have a higher level of understanding

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 28

 1 of a lot of those products than someone necessarily -- a

 2 Mexican American in Chicago.

 3 So that tells you in so many areas how many ways

 4 we need to look at this market.

 5 MR. FRANCO: I will also add my own comments, if

 6 I may, Pablo. I think there's certainly a very

 7 sophisticated dynamic component of the Latino community,

 8 but it's also okay for us to be counted as one. We are

 9 different in many ways, different cultures.

 10 I think of the Honduran banking group who came

 11 up in the United States to market to the Hondurans who

 12 were here in the U.S. From a money transfer and

 13 remittance standpoint because they wanted to reach that

 14 niche, and they had their own unique ways of doing that

 15 that were different than the way they had reached the

 16 Mexican markets because they were now doing business in

 17 the U.S.

 18 But from a corporate America perspective, we

 19 together -- united we're terrific. We bring focus. We

 20 bring attention. I remember the meetings with Ford

 21 Motor Company, very sophisticated at the way they market

 22 to this population, to the entire population, and they

 23 were losing market share in the -- in what they referred

 24 to as the Hispanic markets and were finding creative

 25 ways to help regain that market share.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 29

 1 They found that the Hispanic entrepreneurs who

 2 ran their dealerships, although there were very few out

 3 of many thousands of the total dealerships, they were

 4 outperforming two and a half to three times net revenue

 5 than all other groups within their population.

 6 They learned something new about how to market

 7 and reach and help to recover some of the numbers they

 8 had been slipping in, losing to Toyota and Honda as a

 9 matter of fact.

 10 The point here is I think as it relates to the

 11 Hispanic community as a whole, it's an exciting time to

 12 be Hispanic, and we all do speak the same language, and

 13 not just within the Hispanic population but within the

 14 entire population, and that's the language of

 15 economics. Numbers are the same to all of us, and so

 16 that's something I think not to be lost in the analysis

 17 here.

 18 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: So in a way we've kind of come

 19 full circle. Joe has explained and I think Luis was

 20 also explaining how you need to slice it thinner to get

 21 the message across, but on the other hand you mentioned,

 22 George, how you want to achieve economies of scale as a

 23 market, so keeping in mind that not all of us have the

 24 economies of scale to slice it so thin, if you will,

 25 what are some of the particular issues that are

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 30

 1 particularly important to the Latino/Hispanic

 2 communities and what are the preferred sources of

 3 information for Hispanics to get to these sources of

 4 information?

 5 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I would like to take a lead

 6 on that. One other important point that I will say to

 7 most of you, and my presumption is that you are working

 8 in the federal government, are interested in reaching

 9 out to the Latino community, and the big point here

 10 would be buy U.S. Latino.

 11 One of the biggest challenges that we have found

 12 at MAYA is the pot is growing. More and more people are

 13 getting into the Latino marketplace from NBC's

 14 Telemundo, et cetera, et cetera, tons of agencies, and

 15 what is happening is Latino owned firms, the NOVA

 16 communities, especially if you are in public relations,

 17 are so to speak getting squeezed out, and so if you want

 18 us to be a part of that solid middle class, if you want

 19 us to continue to be the number 1 home buyers in

 20 America, you must buy I recommend U.S. Latinos.

 21 And to suggest they're not qualified firms, no

 22 creo, I don't think so, so that would be one of the key

 23 points that I would say it you, but what I would also

 24 share in regards to how do we reach them.

 25 We just recently conducted an 11 city market

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 31

 1 research study for Ameri Group, one of the largest

 2 managed care companies, around the nation and all over

 3 to really try to find the silver bullet. Short answer

 4 there are no silver bullets out there, but what we found

 5 over and over again is that television plays a huge role

 6 in the lives of Latinos.

 7 That is, we consume a lot of Spanish language

 8 television, and a lot of English Language Television.

 9 Again I think as you probably -- I don't know how many

 10 people are from other marketers, but I think the other

 11 important thing is there's a lot of players out there.

 12 It's not two Spanish language networks. In some

 13 cases like in LA, Miami, the number 1 stations reaching

 14 our community are independents so there's a lot of

 15 opportunity. Followed by that is radio. Radio is

 16 really good, and I think more importantly, beyond just

 17 saying radio, when you combine radio and you combine

 18 television, the recall for your message, whether it's a

 19 public awareness message, whether it's a brand message,

 20 is powerful.

 21 Yes, quick mends media also can play an integral

 22 role in your mix, but what we find in hard to reach

 23 populations, especially in urban areas, is the outdoor

 24 advertising, the out of home, and it goes beyond

 25 billboards. It is the POPs, the point of purchase on

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 32

 1 the countertops.

 2 I'm sure that my other colleagues have plenty

 3 more to add, and let me just end it there.

 4 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: And I think one of the

 5 other things, when you do go out there and we do speak

 6 about radio and talked about television, but I think we

 7 have to remember that Spanish and English -- I know that

 8 I have read where Latinos tend to like the idea that an

 9 ad offers both English and Spanish or is offered in each

 10 language, not just in one or the other because we are

 11 bilingual, and we do -- sometimes we're more comfortable

 12 reading -- listening to Spanish but reading in English.

 13 So when you go out there you need to keep that

 14 in mind, that they're both -- we like to hear both. We

 15 don't want to be categorized as only Spanish speakers or

 16 only English speakers. We like to have somebody reach

 17 out to us in both so we can feel comfortable with

 18 whichever one we want to read or listen to at the time.

 19 MR. FRANCO: I would like to just add a quick

 20 comment to that, to Julia's comment. I as a Hispanic, I

 21 speak English. I speak Spanish. I read English. I

 22 read Spanish, but I communicate primarily in English,

 23 but I feel more welcome when I see something in Spanish

 24 or an attempt or an effort.

 25 U.S. Bank has been very effectively and very

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 33

 1 aggressively going after Hispanic markets. They have

 2 their national Hispanic initiative, and they've gone out

 3 of their way to really translate things into Spanish,

 4 and that indicator, it gives one a sense of what the

 5 interest is on the part of an organization, in this case

 6 the example of U.S. Bank, to reach the market, to

 7 welcome the market, to bring them in to the fold, so to

 8 speak, and I think that's very significant. It is to

 9 me.

 10 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: I think you can call that

 11 marketing with heart. I think a lot of the way that we

 12 are reached most effectively and a lot of the ways that

 13 Latinos look at ads and make their buying decisions is

 14 based on family. What does the family -- I mean, I know

 15 that I've got several siblings, and when I'm going to

 16 make a big decision, I talk to mom and dad. I talk to

 17 my brothers. I talk to my sisters, and one brother is a

 18 banker, which investment should I make.

 19 You need to reach out and consider the entire

 20 family when you're putting together your ads, your

 21 outreach.

 22 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Just to add on on this the

 23 bilingual material, and I totally agree with George and

 24 Julia, but I think the point here is the Latino

 25 household is bilingual and some primarily speak in

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 34

 1 Spanish and others in English, so when you're able to

 2 combine the both, and I would really suggest a brochure

 3 over print ad copy, it does work really powerful.

 4 And what we have found to be best practices at

 5 MAYA is if you're targeting Latinos, have a lot of the

 6 content in Spanish. Yes, you can have a universal

 7 Spanish, and I've heard a lot of translation horror

 8 stories, so you also can have crypt notes of what you

 9 have in Spanish in English.

 10 And the last thing I'll say is based on

 11 research, pictures are worth a thousand words, over and

 12 over, especially for you that are doing health work,

 13 public education work. Pictures are worth a thousand

 14 words that complement the copy that you do have.

 15 Colors are also very, very significant. I know

 16 we all love bright colors, but over and over, the

 17 research that I've done, put something pastel, you put

 18 something loud, I've got to tell you, things that are

 19 bright really jump out for you but for our community, so

 20 those are just other things that might help you as you

 21 develop outreach materials.

 22 MR. MUSE: Yeah. It's critical in taking a look

 23 at a marketing -- strategic approach to a marketing

 24 problem. If what we do is marginalize Hispanic

 25 consumers to be Hispanic consumers that only speak

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 35

 1 Spanish or Hispanic consumers that only speak English or

 2 Hispanic consumers that perceive themselves as Hispanic

 3 or Hispanic consumers that perceive them as white, you

 4 end up with sedimentation neurosis.

 5 I think what's critical is when you go after

 6 these marketplaces, the first most important task is to

 7 define your marketplace based on demography that's

 8 important to you, the customers. Once you do that, you

 9 start to find that you may have a plethora of consumers,

 10 different tones, different textures.

 11 You've developed programs that reach them, but

 12 you have to maintain a critical analysis of the brand

 13 message, brand communication. It's communicated in the

 14 way that resonates with all your customers, whether they're

 15 watching a television ad on a Spanish language

 16 television or turn to a sports program on ESPN.

 17 Whatever languages are involved, let's assume that we

 18 provide the messages that resonate with those

 19 audiences.

 20 It reminds me of a campaign which we just.

 21 Completed for HHS and the Center for Medicaid Services

 22 to the Latino market, and it was critical to find a way

 23 to communicate with beneficiaries and the caregivers to

 24 help the Hispanic consumer better understand its

 25 benefits and how to practice and use some Medicaid

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 36

 1 services.

 2 What we knew initially was that there would be a

 3 problem communicating to a relatively younger demo and

 4 the older demo, and we decided to use Spanish language,

 5 and not only were we successful in this kind of dual

 6 communication but it out-delivered the communication in

 7 the general market.

 8 We ended up beating some of our competitors in

 9 terms of results, but the results have to resonate from

 10 brand perspective, we believe, and more importantly, I

 11 think as we move forward, information is the key and

 12 being able to speak directly to these audiences and

 13 really educate them with regard to some concern will

 14 make them the better arbiter of the message. It will

 15 help make sure that they don't get prayed upon by those

 16 who try to give them false messages.

 17 One key piece of research that actually was

 18 announced this week in Hispanic Market Weekly was some

 19 Simmons data that suggested that Latino consumers,

 20 particularly those who listen and get their messages in

 21 Spanish, are decidedly more receptive and responsive to

 22 messages, advertising messages, more so than the general

 23 consumer, and there was a lot of questions as to why

 24 that was true. There was actually no argument that it

 25 was true. I mean, the response levels are much higher,

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 37

 1 which probably is why some of the predators are

 2 practicing in the Hispanic community.

 3 One of the concerns was that there's a limit to

 4 the access for certain programming for Latino consumers,

 5 particularly those who get their messages in Spanish,

 6 and therefore they tend to be somewhat more receptive to

 7 the messages that come across Spanish language

 8 television.

 9 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: When we talk about age, I

 10 know we talked about the Latino community being skewed

 11 to a very young age, but there are about five million

 12 Latinos who are 50 plus, and about half of those are

 13 from 50 to 59 years old, so that is a very good target

 14 for all of you in terms of getting the information out

 15 there.

 16 Again in getting the information out, I think

 17 you need to look at not just print and not just at the

 18 TV and radio, but you also need to look at Internet.

 19 For instance, at AARP, the Segunda Juventud magazine,

 20 what we do is we have a longer article in Spanish. We

 21 do a brief summary in English, and a lot of people in

 22 focus groups have said they like to make sure that they

 23 understood the Spanish by reading the English summary.

 24 Then we have our web site, which provides the

 25 whole story in English and the full story in Spanish,

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 38

 1 and a lot of us in the 50 to 59 group, I'll include

 2 myself in that group, are asked by our parents to look

 3 for information, consumer information, health

 4 information, all of those things on the Internet,

 5 because they're still afraid to get on, but they're

 6 asking us do look for that information.

 7 So you really need to -- and we're a lot more

 8 willing to sit in front of the computer. Like my

 9 parents came to visit a couple weeks ago and said,

 10 You're just like your brother, you spend all your time

 11 sitting in front of that darn computer, so I think

 12 that's a really good source.

 13 And if you're targeting people like my age who

 14 can then take that message that you want to get across

 15 to even older or younger, but mostly older people who

 16 need to get that information.

 17 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Pablo, if I can.

 18 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Please.

 19 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Julia triggered a couple

 20 thoughts that I would like to share with you. You

 21 brought up the issue of brand development and branding,

 22 and I was quite surprised when Homeland Security got

 23 itself together. In fact Tom Riggs was talking about

 24 branding. Branding, it was just one of the first times

 25 I've ever heard people talk about that here in the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 39

 1 District.

 2 But I think the important point of what I'm

 3 saying, What is branding? From our perspective really

 4 branding your image. It's what you want to convey

 5 yourself, and there's brand value proposition, but let's

 6 say it is the image that you want to convey to the rest

 7 of the world.

 8 There needs to be consistency, but the more

 9 important thing with branding here is the difference

 10 between making a sale, not making a sale, and that's why

 11 successful companies like Pepsi, like Sears, like

 12 Proctor and Gamble spend a ton of money in brand

 13 development because it works.

 14 I know if you're the federal government

 15 sometimes you can't afford to do advertising. Just thin

 16 about the ONDCP, one of the most successful campaign.

 17 Why? Because they're spending a ton of money there.

 18 So one of the challenges for you is really to

 19 look for advertising dollars for your brand

 20 development.

 21 The other thing beyond buying U.S. Latino in

 22 terms of what do you do to better do your outreach, I

 23 would really say do your homework, do your research.

 24 That would be really one of the most important things I

 25 would recommend and not just by hiring a firm but really

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 40

 1 because a lot of people will say, You're Latino you must

 2 know.

 3 Well, it doesn't matter what I think. It

 4 doesn't matter what our creator thinks. It's more

 5 important what does that target audience think about the

 6 concept, the message, and so what I would really say to

 7 you is do your research, do your homework.

 8 You can simply go online. There's a plethora of

 9 information out there about your given area. If you've

 10 got money, there's always your quantitative and

 11 qualitative research. Even if you don't have it, you

 12 can also do an informal copy testing if you're

 13 developing brochures, public service announcements,

 14 other materials, and again assuming that some of the

 15 folks here are from the federal government.

 16 But I would really say the key to your success

 17 is ultimately to do your research first. Then you

 18 determine what's the message going to look at. What's

 19 the vehicle to get the message out. Do we need PR. Do

 20 we need advertising, and you probably need it all, but

 21 that would probably be the other thing that I would say

 22 that would be a good way to get going to do your

 23 research.

 24 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Let me revisit a couple things

 25 you mentioned in a little more detail. I was inspired by

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 41

 1 what Julia said about purchasing decisions. Number 1,

 2 do you see any change in how the Latino market makes

 3 purchasing decisions in general? Number 2, what types

 4 of advertisements seem to appeal the most to this

 5 demographic, and you mentioned the point of purchase,

 6 TV, radio, et cetera, but what types of advertising

 7 specifically.

 8 And, number 3, again with a compound question.

 9 You mentioned the generic Spanish. I would be

 10 interested to hear what kind of Spanish you find works

 11 to the broadest appeal. I thought I had differences

 12 between Latin America. We have a colleague in my office

 13 from Spain. It's like someone In English talking so

 14 someone in Scottish. We just don't understand each

 15 other most of the time in Spanish, so what are your

 16 thoughts on that?

 17 MR. MUSE: First off, we've been doing this for

 18 about 20, 25 years, and there's a group of advertising

 19 marketers who spend a lot of time in Spanish language,

 20 so we kind of invented our own jargon, our own Spanish,

 21 that has its flavor in a national content, so it's kind

 22 of, I perhaps shouldn't use the word faster, but it

 23 helps create commonalties in language, and it's been

 24 very successful, and we've all become pretty adjoined to

 25 its use.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 42

 1 What was the other question you started with?

 2 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: How do you make purchasing

 3 decisions?

 4 MR. MUSE: We should note that last year $8

 5 billion was spent with Latinos online, and that's a

 6 growing number, so obviously there's a need for us to

 7 recognize the importance of Latinos online.

 8 I have an anecdotal experience with a shopping

 9 web site five years ago out of Mexico who really wanted

 10 to reach select Latinos in southern California, the

 11 regions, to purchase on their web site the goods that

 12 they want to send to Mexico and then to pay for those

 13 goods and services to be trucked into the family and

 14 friends in Mexico, a remarkable idea.

 15 It was very decompressed and it was very

 16 successful, so successful they got bought out by folks

 17 that I think in Spain and are no longer a client, but

 18 the idea I think of ECommerce is extraordinary.

 19 I think one of the things that I'll point to

 20 you, I won't talk about television and who has been

 21 successful in that and who has been successful in radio,

 22 but we have found that direct mail is fast becoming a

 23 medium that cannot be denied with the ability to reach

 24 Latinos based on surname in certain areas and to really

 25 learn better how to handle the language issue, whether

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 43

 1 it's bilingual or you find some ways, Spanglish in fact,

 2 to reach that marketplace.

 3 The results that we're getting from direct mail

 4 opportunities is well above the national averages for

 5 direct mail. I'll stop at those two.

 6 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: On the point of making

 7 purchasing decisions, what really jumped out in my mind

 8 was the word las mujera (phonetic), the women, by and

 9 large. Over and over again from work that I've done for

 10 home buying, health care, food, grocery stores, front

 11 line decision makers are woman in the Latino household.

 12 In fact Joe brought up an interesting point

 13 regarding direct mail. The Direct Marketing Association

 14 study out, and the thing blew me away was, number 1,

 15 some Latinos 50 percent, don't know what the sampling

 16 was, said they wanted more junk mail. I went, Wow, so,

 17 yes, there is an opportunity there.

 18 I think the other thing that is interesting

 19 equally is that we are buying a lot on the phone, more

 20 so than any other Americans so that's another way to

 21 go. Keep in mind before you start putting your money

 22 there about how many times do you want to pick up the

 23 phone for a stranger to make a pitch to you, so I would

 24 definitely move with caution on that one.

 25 I guess regarding -- and I think there's two

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 44

 1 different things here. When I'm talking creative,

 2 that's something and also then translating educational

 3 promotional terms, but I think above all, make sure you

 4 have a Latino writer on board doing your work. It's not

 5 enough just to have someone who has a bacca (phonetic)

 6 surname.

 7 That's not my role, so, number 1, make sure you

 8 have the experts on board, Latinos that not only can

 9 write but understand the culture, know how to motivate

 10 those hot buttons and if you're doing brochures, doing

 11 newsletters, that kind of work, web work, what we find

 12 as best practice is to bring together a group of

 13 Latinos, ideally someone representing the Caribbean,

 14 Central, South America, and we can't forget Mexicanas

 15 either and Spain, but the idea is you bring people

 16 together to work on written work like newsletters and

 17 brochures.

 18 And, yes, it can be very complicated the word.

 19 Case in point, the word bus, las communita, las wawa,

 20 las autobus (phonetics)? What do you do, and so

 21 sometimes what you have to do is you have to interweave

 22 that within the material and then more importantly there

 23 are some words that simply don't just don't need to be

 24 translated like the name of your organization.

 25 I would say you don't translate your name, keep

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 45

 1 it that way, but also the Internet. Everyone knows

 2 Internet. Everyone knows Email, so keep in mind that

 3 there are some words that you just simply just don't get

 4 go there.

 5 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: American Demographics had

 6 an article recently, and they found when looking at

 7 shopping of different ethnic groups and racial groups,

 8 it says a quarter of Hispanics say their kids have a

 9 significant impact on the brands that they buy, and that

 10 they tend -- we tend to make shopping a family affair.

 11 Again going back a little bit to what I had

 12 mentioned in terms of keeping the family in mind, also

 13 it says Hispanic consumers are twice as likely as their

 14 non Hispanic counterparts to base their marketing

 15 decisions on ads, on ads, and that they like to be

 16 advertised to in both English and Spanish rather than

 17 just in one and that their decisions are equally

 18 influenced -- I know I've been talking about family, but

 19 this says friends and neighbors as well as celebrities

 20 play a role, so keep all of those in mind.

 21 MR. FRANCO: Pablo, I want to go back to an

 22 excellent point that Luis made or touched on a moment

 23 ago, and from the perspective of the work we do at the

 24 U.S. Spanish Chamber of Commerce, there are very

 25 exciting things happening in the Latino markets today.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 46

 1 Latinos are outpacing all other groups in terms

 2 of start ups of new businesses. Things are just

 3 happening, and it's a very exciting time and a

 4 phenomenal market to have been to. It's just growing by

 5 leaps and bounds, and I think there's tremendous

 6 opportunity there as well.

 7 There's also another point that came to mind as

 8 Luis was talking earlier in his discussion, and it has

 9 to do with leadership. It's important I think to have

 10 Hispanics in leadership positions making decisions to

 11 effectively reach Hispanic markets. There's something

 12 about the chemistry that occurs when that happens.

 13 Interesting enough, I've served for a number of

 14 years on an advisory council of the Federal Reserve, and

 15 I was asked to testify recently at the J.P. Morgan Chase

 16 Bank on merger hearings in relation to that merger of

 17 this new bank coming together, institutional over a

 18 trillion dollars in asset size, second largest bank in

 19 the world, after the merger.

 20 But the topic came up as it relates to

 21 leadership at the board level and Hispanic leadership

 22 there, and interesting enough, the thought there was

 23 should we be doing this, is it the right thing to do,

 24 and that all may be true, and I don't question that at

 25 all, but there are different reasons for doing that.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 47

 1 It's the business case reasons. To really most

 2 effectively tap those markets, it's important to have

 3 strong leadership who really comes from within those

 4 markets and understanding them from a whole other

 5 perspective.

 6 So that can't be missed, and I do agree I think

 7 if I interpreted correctly Luis referred to the fact

 8 that we as Hispanics lag in many ways. The African

 9 American community has done a phenomenal job of, as we

 10 say back at the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in

 11 Wisconsin, of getting their share of lockastea

 12 (phonetic). They've done a great job.

 13 We have not done as well, although that's

 14 growing, and based on Dr. Passel's statistics here

 15 earlier, it's great to see that the growth is happening

 16 very quickly, but much here related to the Latino

 17 markets and of course leadership roles as it relates to

 18 effectively tapping the Latino market.

 19 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: George, you bring up a great

 20 point, and I think it's something that needs to be a

 21 little bit repeated and emphasized, in fact HACR, the

 22 Hispanic Association of Corporate Responsibility, came

 23 out with a recent study.

 24 Now, keep in mind I've been at this for over 20

 25 years. I look young, but I've been out there for a long

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 48

 1 time, but keep in mind that when I first started this,

 2 less than 2 percent of all ad dollars were being spent

 3 against the Latino community. Now, almost, what, about

 4 13 years later since I started by my business, we're

 5 creeping up. Right now it's about 4 percent of all

 6 advertising dollars.

 7 What's wrong with that picture? You heard the

 8 stats, $600 billion, the largest ethnic minority group

 9 in the United States, you know, but what's going on?

 10 Going to George's point, what the problem is is we're

 11 not at the table.

 12 While we represent 12 percent of the civilian

 13 work force, less than 2 percent of us Latinos are in

 14 fact on boards of directors. Less than 1 percent

 15 actually of us Latinos are running Fortune 500. Until

 16 we're at the table, until we are brand managers, that's

 17 when really you will see a significant change.

 18 And it does make a huge difference having a

 19 Latino being at the table because what I've learned

 20 living here in the District all my life, it's not what

 21 you know, it's who you know, and that really does play a

 22 big role, but more importantly in fact in the HACR

 23 report.

 24 And in fact you can probably go online and find

 25 it yourself, it did talk about the direct impact, those

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 49

 1 businesses that had Latinos on their board of directors

 2 actually were doing far better than those that were not

 3 so it's not just a matter of diversity, and we've got to

 4 get beyond that word because diversity is not just a

 5 black and white issue. It is really a more inclusive

 6 issue, but we've got to talk about dollars and cents.

 7 And again it goes to that whole point if we want

 8 to have the Latino community be self sufficient, going

 9 on to college, we need to be a part of that solid middle

 10 class.

 11 MR. MUSE: I'm reminded, and I have a couple

 12 comments here, in that we are an equal opportunity

 13 employer, it's critical for us to look beyond ethnicity

 14 and culture. It's more an amazing notion that people

 15 have defined cultures and languages as the only ones who

 16 can deal with those cultures and languages, and which is

 17 simply not the case.

 18 What's important for us to look at, however, is

 19 the culture that's a transparent source of power in

 20 language as well as reaching consumers. I remember once

 21 sitting actually here in Washington, and I was sitting

 22 with one of my partners, and we were speaking, and right

 23 behind us was a conversation going on in Spanish, and it

 24 intrigued us so we turned around to look, and it was

 25 these two what looked like Japanese men speaking fluent

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 50

 1 Spanish and we were stopped for a second to -- we were

 2 reminded that they were from I think Brazil or Peru, and

 3 we stopped and had a conversation with them, and it is

 4 one of those amazing notions that you have to

 5 understand, culture does not care about ethnicity.

 6 One other example of that is I was presenting

 7 some work to a client for Spanish language, and I

 8 introduced them to my media director, and at first I

 9 told them -- because he tended to be -- well, he was a

 10 Jack Mormon, a wonderful guy, but he was a little

 11 racist, and he knew it. The great thing about this

 12 particular client is he knew he was racist, and we

 13 talked about it.

 14 But he said to me, he said, Well, who is this

 15 Monica Chen you're bringing in? I said, Monica Chen is

 16 the media director, and she's fluent in Spanish. She

 17 was raised Spanish I think in Mexico, and she's an

 18 extraordinary woman. He said, She couldn't possibly

 19 know my media campaign for Latinos.

 20 I said, What do you mean she couldn't know

 21 it. He said, Well, she's not Spanish. Meet her, so he

 22 comes and meets her. She's extraordinary. She does an

 23 incredible campaign, and we sold out a fight at his

 24 casino in Vegas.

 25 And after the fight -- what was extraordinary

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 51

 1 were the numbers of Latinos that came to this particular

 2 fight, but afterwards we were standing by the slot

 3 machines, and he was smiling ear to ear and he knew his

 4 count was going to be through the roof, and he looked at

 5 me and said, Well, I guess that Monica Chen knows her

 6 Hispanic market, and I said, Well, she certainly does.

 7 So it's just important to know that culture and

 8 language often times transcend the notions of

 9 ethnicity.

 10 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Let me go to the issue of

 11 telemarketing I believe, Luis, you raised it a second

 12 ago or a few minutes ago. What types of telemarketing

 13 calls are Hispanics getting are and are they in English

 14 or Spanish or both and how are they reacting to

 15 telemarketing other than the fact that they're possibly

 16 buying more than the average person. Do you have any

 17 idea?

 18 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Again, we don't do a lot of

 19 telemarketing, and part of it to me, yeah, I like to be

 20 effective in marketing. You have to hit people all over

 21 the place, but to me it seems a little bit intrusive, so

 22 if you want to learn more, obviously I mentioned the

 23 Direct Marketing Association, they probably do have

 24 their study on board -- online so you might want to go

 25 to that, but I don't really have much to offer on that.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 52

 1 MR. MUSE: There's some remarkable things

 2 happening in telemarketing. I was introduced to a

 3 system not too long ago called Patriot, and this system

 4 although it's not a government system, they have a great

 5 name for it, but it's able to actually pinpoint the

 6 caller through a telemarketing service. Actually I need

 7 to go back a little further.

 8 They can tailor make communication based on

 9 typical household incidents to whatever communication

 10 you want, whether it's a general in the Army speaking or

 11 a celebrity. People love celebrities in any language.

 12 I hate telemarketing calls, but the word is that if you

 13 use a celebrity on a telemarketing call, people will

 14 listen. Don Ho talks about some God forsaken trip to

 15 Hawaii, people will listen on the phone.

 16 It's like nothing I've ever seen, but what they

 17 also are able to do is that caller, if they decide to

 18 respond and call a service center, this system can

 19 direct them to the nearest service center in their

 20 neighborhood and have the phone ring while they're still

 21 on the line to be involved in the call and to actually

 22 be talked to by someone in Spanish or whatever

 23 language. This is what's happening in telemarketing,

 24 and it's coming to your home soon.

 25 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: How do you all expect the U.S.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 53

 1 Spanish market to change in the next five years, in the

 2 next ten years, maybe in the next 15 years? Jeffrey

 3 mentioned some of the demographic changes. What do you

 4 think as far as advertisement and message in the next

 5 ten years or so?

 6 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I think one of the biggest

 7 trends you will probably see in the general market is

 8 probably more people that look like me in some general

 9 commercials. I've already started to see that trend.

 10 Probably telemundo will also follow suit in that regard,

 11 and I think it does make a difference when you are

 12 marketing to the majority of our population.

 13 I'm going to throw out a big word out there,

 14 most of us are (Spanish) or mixed blood. And you have

 15 to keep that in mind. Yes, we come in all colors there

 16 is Fuji Moora. There is Carmen Diaz. There is Sammy

 17 Sosa, but a good majority of the population here are

 18 European and indigenous blood, so keep in mind that will

 19 be probably one of the biggest trends.

 20 I think another thing that will probably happen,

 21 it's already started, you will probably see more Spanish

 22 language ads coming on board as well. That will be

 23 another big big trend. I also think that we've had an

 24 influence on culture, and one thing about the Latino

 25 community that I feel really proud about is that we are

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 54

 1 proud about who we are, whether we're Central Americans,

 2 South Americans, and we haven't been included in

 3 everything.

 4 But what I'm seeing here, as with the big bomb

 5 of Chaquita and Ricky Iglesias, a lot of our culture is

 6 now becoming part of the main thing. We talked about

 7 quesadillas in Iceland. What's the number one condiment

 8 in America right now? It's salsa, and so what the

 9 biggest change will probably be, and it goes back to we

 10 didn't cross the border, the border crossed us, you will

 11 probably see us really much more a part of the American

 12 mainstream.

 13 And to that point I was out vacationing in

 14 Ketchum, Idaho, about two years ago, pretty exclusive

 15 resort. First time I was there, and this is a little

 16 mining town, cowboy town, and lo and behold in the

 17 middle of main street, an ad in Espanola.

 18 So what I'm saying is we're not just an urban

 19 city, community. We are now going into the deep south,

 20 Atlanta, North Carolina, and so those can be sort of the

 21 biggest changes, it's just not going to be just in urban

 22 settings but all over middle America.

 23 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: I think when Luis talks

 24 about pride in our culture, so many times we have been

 25 considered as being a culturated, assimilating, all of

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 55

 1 these things, but now there's a term that I've heard

 2 recently, retro acculturation, and because the Latino

 3 culture and all of these things have become so much part

 4 of the mainstream, many Latinos, especially a lot of

 5 younger ones who had pushed away the Spanish culture and

 6 their culture, are now seeing that, hey, it's kind of

 7 cool and they want to learn the language and find out

 8 how to do the Sasa and how to dance Sasa and are buying

 9 a lot of albums, ethnicity, so that's a whole -- again

 10 in the future we're going to be seeing that it's almost

 11 a rebirth of the culture amongst those in our culture.

 12 MR. MUSE: Don't watch race in the next 15

 13 years, watch culture, and the reason for that is very

 14 simple. With regard to culture what you're going to

 15 find is that the dominant culture appropriates the

 16 culture of the ascending in a market. That's just the

 17 nature of things for hundreds of hundreds of years.

 18 It's not going to change. It will continue.

 19 What you will find, however, is that there will

 20 be a political influence that will rise with Latinos so

 21 it will be in the communities they live in and certainly

 22 international level. I think it will be a very short

 23 period of time, probably two, maybe four years where Los

 24 Angeles, the second largest city in this country, will

 25 have a Latino mayor. I know the right guy as well to

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 56

 1 select.

 2 The other aspect of culture influence is that as

 3 this evolving American culture gets exported, as it

 4 does, it becomes a national universal culture,

 5 international culture, and I think the international

 6 culture will also have a blending effect in terms of

 7 what we call popular culture.

 8 And then I think the final thing that's

 9 important in terms of what I see over the future besides

 10 an extension of opportunities for Latinos in a

 11 professional context as well as a consumption context is

 12 there's going to be more information coming up from the

 13 government with regard to really helping Latinos with

 14 issues that they face, whether it be nutrition, whether

 15 it be false advertising, whether it be predatory

 16 practices of advertisers.

 17 There will be more of that kind of advertising,

 18 and then finally, we will finally determine that the 50

 19 percent of the population, some 20 million people who

 20 speak English, who are Latino and prefer to receive

 21 their messages in English, will actually get their own

 22 television station.

 23 CTV is already about, and it's Spanish language

 24 culture in English, and I think what you'll see is more

 25 of that. It will effect your networks. There will be

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 57

 1 more of that combination of cultures. It's a mixing.

 2 It's an excited time.

 3 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Pablo, just other thoughts

 4 that just made be think about this, I think one of the

 5 other biggest trends you will see. We will become

 6 visible. We will no longer be this sleeping giant. We

 7 will become visible.

 8 Here are the numbers. We're almost 15 percent

 9 of the total population, but we're not in board rooms.

 10 There's no one in the Senate right now, heaven forbid

 11 the White House, but we will become visible. In fact

 12 this makes me think about this movie which I'm totally

 13 intrigued with, and it's coming out, actually being

 14 released on the 14th, it's called A Day Without

 15 Mexicans.

 16 And I think the most significant part, this is

 17 in California, what would happen in California when 14

 18 million Latinos disappear. What will happen when six,

 19 seven million Latinos in Los Angeles disappear? Yeah,

 20 we can get into this stereotyping about dishwashers and

 21 nannies, but we have a direct impact, especially in

 22 California which is what, the eighth, ninth largest

 23 economy in the world.

 24 We have a tremendous impact, so the most

 25 important thing is that we will become visible people.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 58

 1 People begin to not just give us lip service, not just

 2 do the minimum for us. I really do believe that that

 3 will probably be one of the biggest things will be at

 4 the table.

 5 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Let me raise a self serving

 6 question here. What would your advice be say for a

 7 federal agency on fairly tight budget trying to reach

 8 the Hispanic Latino community with fairly broad

 9 messages, not very cemented things like fraud and work

 10 at home schemes or things of the like or for other

 11 federal agencies, if you had to customize, if we could

 12 steal your advice, how would you customize? How would

 13 you do it on a fairly small budget?

 14 MR. FRANCO: I have a response to that if I may.

 15 Isn't one of the things we're finding as it relates to

 16 the corporate America environment, which I think also

 17 would apply to the government sector, is strategic

 18 partnerships. They're often a very cost effective way

 19 in which to reach a particular population, a specific

 20 group.

 21 An example of what was done at the U.S. Hispanic

 22 Chamber was a strategic partnership with U.S. Bank,

 23 again a relatively national footprint, and their mission

 24 was to go out and reach and tap the markets from a

 25 banking perspective, both consumers and small business

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 59

 1 banking services, so what they did was they partnered

 2 with the Chamber.

 3 And through the 158 local affiliates throughout

 4 the country, materials were dispersed. The message was

 5 delivered. There's deal flow coming in through those

 6 Chambers, but it's the way that U.S. Bank has been able

 7 to leverage that relationship.

 8 Yes, you think about what are the numbers coming

 9 in and how many deals are coming through, but they're

 10 finding that their greater success is coming by just

 11 being able to message that they're partnered there, and

 12 because it turns out that many of the companies,

 13 Hispanic owned business, small businesses coming in, in

 14 many cases sole proprietorships, are consumers who are

 15 coming in for banking services and are not members.

 16 But yet the fact that there is the brand image

 17 connection for them through the strategic partnership

 18 enables them to very effectively win the confidence over

 19 of the small business owner and the sole proprietor to

 20 come in and do business with the bank, so strategic

 21 partnerships can be a very effective and cost effective

 22 way of reaching the market.

 23 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I'm going to share ten tips

 24 with you, and I'm going to assume we're not talking

 25 about brand development or advertising. We're talking

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 60

 1 public affairs, public relationships, and if anyone has

 2 the desire I'll be able to Email this to you.

 3 Based on best practices, a couple things I'll

 4 share with you in terms of what you could do. Number 1,

 5 buy U.S. Latinos. It does make a difference when you do

 6 buy Hispanic owned firms. We hire other Latinos. We

 7 mentor other Latinos. We do business with Latinos.

 8 There is cooperative economics going on, trickle

 9 down, so that would be, number 1, I would suggest to

 10 you.

 11 Materials do matter. In fact we're launching a

 12 nationwide campaign with the Federal Reserve Board on

 13 direct deposit, and our campaign materials will be quite

 14 different in Los Angeles or on the main land. They do

 15 make a difference.

 16 I think the other thing is translation, hold on

 17 to your money. People see right through that. In

 18 fact. The New York Times came out with a piece this

 19 past December about translations, and first of all

 20 Latinos, they recognize those from a million miles away,

 21 and if it's badly translated then you're not going to

 22 redeem yourself.

 23 So again I would say start from scratch and then

 24 get a back translation from Espanola to English. The

 25 other thing I would suggest you do is if you're doing PR

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 61

 1 work, make it easy to cover your story. For example,

 2 this morning we had a crisis communications media event

 3 for WASA, the water people here. I'm sure you've heard

 4 about the led. They're based out in Blue Plains over

 5 there in Anacostia.

 6 The media is not going to come all the way over

 7 there for a Latino community event, so we make it easy.

 8 We had it in Mount Pleasant, Adams Morgan, kind of the

 9 Latino hub so that does make a big difference as well.

 10 I think the other thing is keep in mind, and

 11 we've talked about the abundance of Latino media, there

 12 is so much media out there. There is CTV, which is a

 13 cable English language network.

 14 The fastest growing segment of the Latino media,

 15 what is it? Magazines. There's so many magazines right

 16 now. In fact a new one just came out for young Latinos,

 17 15, Latinita, and heaven forbid whatever else is out

 18 there, Cosmetology Espanola. There's a lot of that out

 19 there.

 20 Yes, there's a divide unequivocally, but we're

 21 fast getting online. Big sites, Yahoo in Espanola,

 22 others are out there as well so there is an abundance of

 23 opportunities for you to get your story, but again I

 24 would say if you have limited time, effort, I would

 25 focus on television. It's one of the ways that does

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 62

 1 reach a good many of our folks.

 2 The other thing that I would also say is don't

 3 overlook general market media, translation mainstream

 4 media. Almost every major daily right now from the

 5 Houston Chronicles, Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald

 6 have dedicated beat reporter, even the television

 7 stations, they call up and go, What do you guys got

 8 going, so they are interested.

 9 Why? We're consuming a lot. They want

 10 eyeballs, not just the reality of it. They want stories

 11 that relate to us, so again don't overlook the general

 12 market media.

 13 The other thing is with medial relations and so

 14 forth, it's about personal relationships. Get to know

 15 reporters that cover your area, take them out to lunch.

 16 They love drinks also. Host a little meet and greet in

 17 your event. The main thing is public relations, the

 18 word is relations, and that is what's really key here.

 19 The other thing is follow up. If you have an

 20 event follow up. Make sure that if they didn't cover

 21 it, that you send them stuff to make it easy. If it's a

 22 national event, get them a net release. Make it easy

 23 for them to cover up and follow them up. Even if they

 24 don't cover your story, begin the relationship.

 25 The other thing I would also suggest to you is

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 63

 1 have an event that has a Latino theme around it. In

 2 fact we did the unveiling of the Bound Market Foundation

 3 web site's Tomorrow Money. We had Motty Carmen Aponte

 4 of the Puerto Rican Federal Affairs, Javier Destare,

 5 (phonetics) a congressman that had a Latino feel to it.

 6 I think that also definitely does make a

 7 difference, and I would agree with Joe in terms of, yes,

 8 celebrities. Celebrities make a big difference in

 9 drawing media attention to your event, but if you can't

 10 find celebrities, you're not in Hollywood, there's also

 11 politicians, other kinds of leaders.

 12 The key is high visibility people will help

 13 attract the media attention that you need and want

 14 covered, and if you like, you can send me an Email to

 15 Luis at MAYADC.COM, and I'll be happy to send you this

 16 sheet.

 17 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: To piggyback a little I

 18 think on the celebrity aspect, we think celebrity and we

 19 think national international, but what about the local

 20 celebrities? What about the top rated person on

 21 television or the top anchor, news anchor, not just

 22 politicians but you have your activists who are known in

 23 our communities and who are respected and whose voices

 24 are listened to, the neighborhood activist who's out

 25 there at all the board meetings, he or she will be

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 64

 1 listened to.

 2 They are some of the very best spokespeople

 3 people.

 4 MR. MUSE: My suggestion, if you have a small

 5 budget and you need to find some inventive ways of

 6 extending it, is you get more money. Getting more money

 7 ensures results when we use professional services, and I

 8 can tell you dozens of times I've had clients, well

 9 meaning clients come with little bitty dollars to try to

 10 do remarkable things and they just don't happen. Sure.

 11 You can do some stuff and make it look good, but if you

 12 want to produce meaningful results, particularly in this

 13 market that's worth billions of dollars, spend millions

 14 of dollars to produce the results and get the money.

 15 They can find it. If they can't find the money,

 16 then let somebody else do it.

 17 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: At this point, I would like to

 18 turn it to the audience and see if you have any

 19 questions, and when I call on you, please state who you

 20 are and spell your name, please. The gentleman right

 21 here.

 22 MR. GONZALEZ: Good afternoon. Thank you to all

 23 of you. It's fantastic to have you here talking to us.

 24 My name is Rick Gonzalez, and I'm with the Virginia

 25 Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. G O N Z A L E Z. Again

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 65

 1 thank you.

 2 I have a question open to everyone, but

 3 primarily it's something that's been alluded to in this

 4 conversation, and I know it may open a bag of worms, but

 5 if you could discuss a little bit about -- let me

 6 backtrack.

 7 Being from Virginia we have a unique situation

 8 that is not common throughout the nation. Most places

 9 you have a lot of Puerto Ricans, a lot of Mexican

 10 Americans and a lot of Cubans, of which I'm one of

 11 those.

 12 But in Virginia we have these nationalities

 13 represented which is unique in itself, and on top of

 14 that we have multiple cultures, multiple religions and

 15 multiple traditions and classes which come from these 24

 16 nations. How would you go about trying to reach out to

 17 a group in an area that is that diverse in the Hispanic

 18 Latino community?

 19 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Rick, I've lived all my life

 20 here in the Mid Atlantic Region pretty much. I've done

 21 a lot of work with a lot of the leading companies here.

 22 But I'll use Pepco as an example here, a local utility

 23 company.

 24 When they came to us to develop a brand

 25 initiative to instill trust, confidence in Pepco, they

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 66

 1 gave us carte blanche. One of the things we actually

 2 did was create a commercial. Some of you may have seen

 3 it here in the District of Columbia in Virginia. It ran

 4 all over the place. One of the things we did as part of

 5 that commercial -- first of all there were no words.

 6 What really carried that message was images, a

 7 diverse group of Latinos, Afro Latinos, all kinds of

 8 mixed-blood Latinos, but the idea was to celebrate

 9 Latino heritage here in the District of Columbia because

 10 by and large, you don't think about it here in the Mid

 11 Atlantic Region. It's a different world when you go

 12 outside of the Beltway.

 13 So that was one way that we developed an

 14 effective brand initiative, and then the spot was played

 15 over and over again, but it's just a small way of what I

 16 would say to you.

 17 I think the other things is, yes, there is a

 18 suelo comun (phonetic), common ground. There are issues

 19 that do affect us, whether it's language, whether it's

 20 again religion. 90 plus percent of us are Catholic so

 21 you can find those common threads, but as I mentioned

 22 earlier on, don't take it from me. Let's put it to the

 23 test. Let's determine what is the goals that you want

 24 to achieve.

 25 Joe is right, a lot of people want to see so

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 67

 1 much for so little, and I always say save your money

 2 until you get it right, but I think the main thing is

 3 what are the goals? You have to take baby steps.

 4 Things aren't going to happen overnight and that -- the

 5 big thing I would say is determine what do you want to

 6 achieve, and let's do our research against what you want

 7 to achieve.

 8 That would be one of the first things I would

 9 recommended that you do.

 10 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: And I think I would

 11 recommend looking to your communities. What is there

 12 within that diverse community of 24 different groups

 13 that really all of them care about? What is an issue?

 14 What is a locale, what is something that -- all of them

 15 can come together to talk about, and then you can always

 16 bring in other issues as well.

 17 But finding within the communities what it is

 18 that everyone or most everyone can really gather around

 19 and say, yes, this is important to all of us.

 20 MR. MUSE: We completed a project for the

 21 federal government not too many years ago. We launched

 22 the ONDCP program, and in launching that program we

 23 developed the most diversified advertising program in

 24 government history, it still stands as the most

 25 diversified, and in that program we have 14 different

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 68

 1 languages but originally we established from the very

 2 beginning a tool, we called it the zone of commonality

 3 where we're looking for these common perspectives.

 4 And I don't think it's any different whether

 5 you're talking about 14 to 20 different Hispanic

 6 cultures or cultures that speak different languages.

 7 Once you come up with the commonalties, you can build

 8 upon communication programming that includes broadcast

 9 in some cases, but I think in your case, Virginia,

 10 you're probably going to do a lot more outreach and find

 11 ways of cementing and communicating these commonalties

 12 so that it resonates with the targets you're after.

 13 And then having the defined metrics in terms of

 14 the results you want helps us out in making sure we are

 15 successful.

 16 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Can I just add one more

 17 thing? This reminds me of one of my long-term clients,

 18 Wringley Brothers, came to us God knows almost eight

 19 years ago, and I was doing a lot of work in the

 20 southwest, Texas, California, and after two to three

 21 years of helping them sell a ton of tickets, I

 22 approached them. They're headquarters is based here in

 23 Virginia, one of the largest businesses here, and I

 24 said, Can we do something locally here in the District

 25 of Columbia.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 69

 1 And they basically thought, Are you crazy, are

 2 there any Latinos, and I said, Yeah, there's a ton of

 3 them, and I said but if we do it, you have to do it my

 4 way. You have to follow my lead on this one, and so the

 5 couple things that we ended up doing for this program,

 6 and they kind of went through their calendar and they

 7 said, oh, Easter Sunday, that's the worst day we have

 8 sales, and I'm thinking, Oh, you're giving me the worst

 9 day and all the people are going to be at church.

 10 I said, Okay, I'll take on the challenge, but

 11 you have to do it my way. So a couple things we did,

 12 and I'll say this because some of you will go, What if

 13 they call, what do we, et cetera, so what I said was,

 14 Let's do the following.

 15 First of all I know there is an affinity for the

 16 circus in Latin America. We've all gone to it at some

 17 point in our lives. And more importantly, Wringley

 18 Brothers had many Latin American performers, performers

 19 from Spain, Cuba, all over the place so it just made

 20 sense to use them.

 21 So things we did was, number 1, we created a

 22 bilingual night, bilingue. Everything that the MC said

 23 would be said in Spanish. We got media partners

 24 together, both Spanish language Univision, radio, TV,

 25 general market media. We got big corporations behind us

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 70

 1 who wanted to reach out to this community.

 2 There was a grass roots marketing component as

 3 well. We would bring a taste of the circus to

 4 disadvantaged kids, get to your parents. What's the

 5 results? The results -- and I was freaking out. It was

 6 about 3:30, four o'clock, and I'm constantly looking out

 7 at ticket sales, and there's barely a trickle of

 8 people.

 9 Well, by about 5:30 as the show was beginning we

 10 had sold out to mucho Latinos, 10,000 people. We had to

 11 turn away families crying, so the key thing about this

 12 is that a lot of times people say, Oh, they don't have

 13 the money. They can't afford it. These people were

 14 putting down a hundred, 150 a family to come to the

 15 circus. That's their ticket, their popcorn, all of that

 16 stuff.

 17 The other thing was it was an integrated

 18 marketing campaign. That mucho Latino concept that we

 19 developed here locally up to date is the best attended,

 20 most profitable, best publicized event. Wringley has

 21 taken this and made it its signature event and is now

 22 rolling this out around the nation, and who came to

 23 that? Central Americans, South Americans, Caribbeans,

 24 everyone came out to that event.

 25 So you can take something, if you know how to

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 71

 1 reach the community, you have walked in their shoes, and

 2 make it work for you.

 3 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: I have the person over here,

 4 and if you could just -- they're going to give you a

 5 Mike and state your name.

 6 MS. GONZALEZ: My name is Lennie Gonzalez, G O N

 7 Z A L E Z, no relationship but good friends. You asked

 8 a question, Pablo, and I cannot pronounce your last

 9 name, and nobody responded to you regarding the

 10 translation. I understand what Mr. Vasquez is saying,

 11 get the Latino -- the Spanish speakers to work.

 12 I work in a government agency, in a state

 13 government agency. There's no Latinos working there but

 14 me and somebody else, so a lot of communications, press

 15 releases, things like that would not come in in

 16 English. Nobody responded, what is the best Spanish?

 17 Is there a best Spanish? How do we do that?

 18 I cannot write press releases. It's not my

 19 job. I don't have the authority. I have to work with

 20 what they give me, and how do we make it better to be

 21 able to target our audience to make sure that the

 22 audience gets the message?

 23 MR. MUSE: Use professionals. There are

 24 free-lance writers in this area who will be happy to

 25 take your communication and make it work in Spanish or

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 72

 1 any language. Just find the professionals in the

 2 writing community who are willing to do the work, and as

 3 you do, I'm sure trade journals and different ways --

 4 even associations.

 5 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: I think professionals, not

 6 just when he talks about writers, I mean there is a big

 7 difference between a writer and someone who in fact

 8 knows how to convey the style, looking at style, looking

 9 at sending the message a different way, not just

 10 translating something literally.

 11 So when you talk about professionals, really

 12 look at someone whose profession is to be interpreting,

 13 translation, those sorts of things, whether it's for

 14 spoken or written word.

 15 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: I've had the opportunity to

 16 take a look at some of the press releases that go out in

 17 Spanish, and I've had to tweak some words costiada which

 18 to some communities means nothing, so why not use the

 19 simpler word, tiada (phonetics), which to most people

 20 would make sense.

 21 Sometimes you do run into words like truck.

 22 It's going to be a different word pretty much in every

 23 city in the United States in Spanish, so use the

 24 experts, but you have to try to use the lowest common

 25 understanding. Don't be too cute I think with the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 73

 1 words. I'm not an expert. Take that with a grain of

 2 salt.

 3 I had the lady over here and then over there.

 4 MS. PORRICO: My name is Myriam Porrico, M Y R I

 5 A M, P O R R I C O and I actually work for Montgomery

 6 County government at the Office of Consumer Protection,

 7 and while you're saying that basically what are the best

 8 ways to reach out to the community, and you're

 9 absolutely right, one of the best ways I guess is radio,

 10 TV, ECommerce, all the things that you mentioned and

 11 using the celebrities, et cetera.

 12 We find out that those are the same means that

 13 people are using to scam Hispanics. How do we

 14 counteract that? How do we protect our community from

 15 being scammed?

 16 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: I'll be happy to let the

 17 panelists direct that, but I'm glad you raised it, but

 18 it's going to be the thought for the second panel today,

 19 but maybe we can just kick start a little bit if anybody

 20 has any thoughts.

 21 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I think, Myriam, one of the

 22 things maybe I didn't make clear but I think ultimately

 23 in an effective marketing mix of what I find over and

 24 over again as the best practices to reach anyone is word

 25 of mouth.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 74

 1 We talked about partnership developing,

 2 coalition building, and I really do believe in whatever

 3 you do as part of your marketing mix, there should be a

 4 partnership component, and I use that word partnership

 5 because too many times I find clients coming, we have to

 6 get to the community, let's use this group, no, it's not

 7 a one shot deal when you go in there. It's about

 8 cultivating a partnership, a relationship.

 9 And so I would say that as part of the one of

 10 the most effective ways to counter some of this

 11 advertising is really getting people to sit down face to

 12 face to talk to people. It's a lot of money. It's a

 13 lot of hard work but it makes a huge difference.

 14 Then my philosophy is you have to fight fire

 15 with fire. If there's someone out there doing these

 16 deceptive ads on television, well, you need to get your

 17 message out there as well, and if you can't afford that,

 18 you need to start thinking about some guerilla marketing

 19 techniques, how do you get to the attention to get on

 20 television without having to pay for it.

 21 So the thing is television sometimes is too

 22 expensive, I can't afford it, and sometimes you can't

 23 afford not to do it, so again I would just say that

 24 would be my two cents worth on that.

 25 MR. MUSE: Here's a clear success story and

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 75

 1 probably many more success stories regarding protecting

 2 consumers, but particularly Spanish language issues.

 3 There's no better way to do it than information based

 4 campaigns, probably broadcast media with some connection

 5 to a web site as well as a phone information line in

 6 Spanish.

 7 You do that, you'll get the incremental results

 8 you're looking for. You'll get the metrics that your

 9 boss is going to want so that you get a return on

 10 investments so you can keep doing it so those particular

 11 tools work best.

 12 MS. PORRICO: Let me just make a comment.

 13 Actually I am counteracting by basically doing the same

 14 thing, what you just said, and I guess I'm always

 15 looking for other ways of doing it, and one thing that

 16 has worked really, really well is using actually a real

 17 example and bringing it to the radio station alive and

 18 talking about the case and having other people call and

 19 then come to the office.

 20 And then again we're talking about small

 21 budgets. We're talking about a reduced staff, and we

 22 just want to find better ways to protect our

 23 communities.

 24 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: I think one of the things

 25 that was brought up earlier about again partnerships or

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 76

 1 partnering with the media. When you talk with the

 2 media, when you come up with stories, having been a

 3 reporter and editor, if someone calls me up with those

 4 real stories, with a very powerful story, I'm going to

 5 listen. I'm going to want to put it in my newspaper and

 6 my magazine, on the radio and TV.

 7 But another point that was brought up earlier,

 8 when you come to me with that real story, make sure that

 9 the individual is going to be willing to talk, make sure

 10 that they're willing to, if they need to go on

 11 television or be on the radio, to have their photo

 12 taken, make sure that you have your talking points, make

 13 things available to the reporter or the editor.

 14 Make things as easy as possible for those on the

 15 other side and as compelling as possible because I had

 16 written down right before you said that, I think one of

 17 the most important ways to reach the audience is with

 18 those real stories. If they know their neighbor was

 19 affected this way, that's when they listen, when they

 20 can say, I read about Maria having gone to this store

 21 and having bought something that was advertised in this

 22 way and then ended up bait and switch, whatever.

 23 But those real stories are what make people

 24 listen and remember.

 25 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: We have a question over here

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 77

 1 and then the lady and then the lady over there.

 2 MS. SMALL: My name is Bridget, Small, from

 3 AARP, and I'm interested in the question of the

 4 challenge of conveying a message nationally. I've heard

 5 different suggestions from the group here. I have heard

 6 a statement that a person from Mexico living in

 7 California or living in Chicago or living in New York

 8 will have a different level of understanding, like a

 9 media sophistication so that's kind of versioning based

 10 on where someone has ended up geographically.

 11 I've also heard that a message would be

 12 different based on -- someone's primary language only in

 13 Spanish are more prone to victimization so that sounds

 14 like a versioning based on primary language.

 15 So I'm facing the challenge of conveying a

 16 message nationally, so first of all, I would like

 17 someone to tell me, do you -- particularly the agencies,

 18 is it possible to do that? Is there one message that

 19 could be conveyed to the Latino audience nationally or

 20 is it going to be critical to version based on

 21 geography, version based on primary language and the

 22 example that Mr. Franco give, cooperating with a bank

 23 nationally with different Hispanic chambers? Did you

 24 version that regionally or did the bank just say, Here's

 25 our message, roll it out, here's the material?

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 78

 1 MR. FRANCO: It was nationwide.

 2 MS. SMALL: I know but did they version, was

 3 there --

 4 MR. FRANCO: Was there different versions per

 5 region is what you're saying? No, there wasn't. There

 6 was consistency.

 7 MS. SMALL: I'm curious, I would like to hear

 8 more communication about regional version, versioning by

 9 language, whether it's useful, whether it's possible to

 10 do it nationally.

 11 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Bridget, on my point on

 12 niching, if you can do, its always better. Marketing is

 13 like politics. It can be local. There's differences,

 14 but as I mentioned earlier on, we're now in the -- we've

 15 just completed an 11 market research study for Ameri

 16 Group, and the main thing is they're looking to develop

 17 a brand, come up with a single message.

 18 And so as part of that we actually, first of

 19 all, went to the streets. We went to our target

 20 audience, low income folks that rely on Medicaid and

 21 other health services, and we conducted what we called

 22 street intercept. We asked them a series of questions

 23 from what do you think about health care, where do you

 24 get your information, very broad kinds of questions.

 25 I think the sample came back over 1,600 people

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 79

 1 responded. I think the more important thing, I was just

 2 amazed by the level of interest and participation, so

 3 part of it is you've got to go ask the people what

 4 works.

 5 Secondly, we conducted a variety of focus groups

 6 around the nation, and that was really also testing

 7 messaging, colors, all that kind of information. Over

 8 125 folks participated in these follow focus groups

 9 around the nation, and what we found afterwards, once we

 10 got all of this research and went through everything, we

 11 found some consistencies.

 12 We found consistencies that is helping our

 13 client develop an effective brand campaign. The thing

 14 that we had found that were relevant to this community

 15 so they would buy that health insurance was issues like

 16 respect, access, good care. People didn't want great

 17 care. They wanted good care. They recognized in their

 18 minds that getting generic drugs versus brand drugs was

 19 quite different.

 20 And so the point that I want to emphasize as

 21 this goes to the thing, I would you got to do your

 22 research, that's number 1. You have to determine what

 23 you want to do with this research as well. Is it about

 24 building AARP's membership base? Is it about building

 25 awareness that when we become 50 or 55, whatever the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 80

 1 threshold is, that we know that you exist.

 2 So the main thing is you have to have a clear

 3 idea what is it you want to achieve, and, yes, you can

 4 come up with a brand message over and over. Successful

 5 companies like GM do it and others, and Joe mentioned

 6 ONDCP, we worked on that account as well, and they've

 7 been very consistent, the anti drug.

 8 That's the other part of that messaging, and it

 9 seems to have worked, as he suggested in all languages,

 10 and our work in the Latino community has resonated all

 11 over the place as well.

 12 MS. SMALL: In the spirit of disclosure, I am

 13 not the brand person. I'm interested in how to talk to

 14 people about ID theft, so I have a message --

 15 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Do your homework.

 16 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: Coming from AARP, Segunda

 17 Juventud, what we do in our magazine and what I've

 18 always done in all of our places where I have written

 19 stories, edited stories, and when I talk to my writers,

 20 and it goes back again to using real people, and you use

 21 real people from across the country, I always tell my

 22 writers, We're going to do a story on voting. We're

 23 going to do a story on lupus. Be sure you get someone

 24 who is from the west, from the midwest, try to get a

 25 geographic mix, get the ethnic mix. We don't want

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 81

 1 everyone to be of Mexican descent. We want to have the

 2 Puerto Ricans. We want to have the Dominicans.

 3 We want to reach out because again when someone

 4 is in my case reading something about ID theft, which

 5 this issue has been about ID theft, you want to make

 6 sure people can connect and say again I recognize myself

 7 in that person, and I think you have the message,

 8 national message, but you have local or regional people

 9 giving that message.

 10 MR. FRANCO: Pablo, if I may, going back to

 11 Bridget, that's an excellent question, and that unfolds

 12 in my mind, going back to your original question and

 13 comment regarding versioning, in the particular case of

 14 the National Chamber with the U.S. Bank program, the

 15 spectrum of products and services was consistent

 16 nationwide.

 17 What was different and unique was the launch in

 18 each community and how that happened. That had to be

 19 designed differently on a per community basis, but in

 20 your example, from an identity theft program, you're in

 21 the best of all worlds.

 22 From a strategic alliance perspective you're in

 23 a situation where you can in effect have partners out

 24 there that would be willing to fund your mission because

 25 of their business case and economic impact. You in fact

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 82

 1 -- I can see very easily where you would AARP from the

 2 perspective of what you want to achieve there would

 3 actually generate revenue off of your mission as opposed

 4 to paying.

 5 It's a tremendous opportunity there. The

 6 business case is so strong for those who are adversely

 7 effected where identity theft occurs, the banks, the

 8 insurance companies and other service providers.

 9 MS. WINICK: My name is Lona Winick, and, yes, I

 10 do speak Spanish, W I N I C K.

 11 My question is more of a comment to the

 12 panelists. You guys have all touched on how to reach

 13 the Latino consumers. I think the number 1 point, back

 14 to our friend Maria, is consistency. I mean, don't have

 15 Maria go on the air, get off the air and let the story

 16 die there. Use the media for an educational campaign,

 17 dissemination of information.

 18 That's something that consumers need to see as

 19 an ongoing effort. Don't go in and out of the

 20 marketplace as a token effort. If you are going to run

 21 an integrated campaign, don't just run it for two or

 22 three weeks, just continue on an ongoing basis.

 23 MS. FRASIER: Hi, my name is Connie Kin Frasier

 24 I'm with the American Advertising Federation, and to a

 25 large degree, Bridget touched on my question, but I

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 83

 1 really wanted to see what the panelists had to say in

 2 regards to an earlier statement where they said that

 3 results resonate from brand perspective.

 4 And I think oftentimes when we think about

 5 branding we think of branding of product, and in many

 6 instances, you all mentioned products that were well

 7 branded, but I think for this audience, their product is

 8 more so of a service type nature maybe, so if you could

 9 give some examples on how you might go about branding

 10 for more of a service oriented product, I think that

 11 might be helpful as well.

 12 MR. VAZQUEZ-AJMAC: Connie, we're right now in

 13 the midst of launching a new campaign for the Centers

 14 for Disease Central, CDC, and it's actually probably one

 15 of the very few national Latino initiatives that CDC is

 16 doing, and from my perspective the most important thing

 17 that we need to get out there is what does CDC stand

 18 for.

 19 It stands for the ultimate authority for health

 20 care, and so as we're developing this campaign on

 21 antibiotics, beyond the fact that we've got to get the

 22 message out there, the most important thing for us is

 23 really to begin to brand, what is CDC, what does it

 24 stand for, and then again going -- as I mentioned to

 25 Bridget we're doing our research. We're doing market

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 84

 1 research in Miami, in Colorado. We're testing various

 2 mechanisms to reach out to this community as well.

 3 So I hope that that adds a response to your

 4 question.

 5 MS. FRASIER: In a sense you're branding the

 6 organization more so than a specific issue at that point

 7 or a combination of both.

 8 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: I think part of it once

 9 people understand what CDC stands for like McDonald's,

 10 burgers, IBM computers, the idea is when they see CDC,

 11 first of all that they trust where the information is

 12 coming, and I think a lot of my Latino colleagues will

 13 say, Yeah, the governments, Latinos, we're scared of

 14 them.

 15 Yeah, there's a lot of that but I think it's

 16 part of that is they have an outreach to us, and so I

 17 would also echo what Joe says is that we need the

 18 federal government to start stepping up and reaching

 19 into our community. In fact a has been, the Hispanic

 20 association group, came out with a recent study, and it

 21 talked about those that were succeeding in outreaching

 22 to our community, they're getting a big return on our

 23 investment.

 24 But one of the groups, one of the sectors that

 25 is clearly lagging behind in its commitment to the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 85

 1 Latino community is the federal government. Case in

 2 point ONDCP, we've talked about ONDCP. I can only tell

 3 you they've had about, what, a hundred full page ads

 4 that went out to dailies. Not one Latino Spanish

 5 newspaper got those ads.

 6 What's up with that? So the reality of it is

 7 that we need to put some pressure on the federal

 8 government to begin to start doing some effective

 9 outreach, and it can't be piecemeal. It's got to be

 10 consistent. It's not a three month deal. There has to

 11 be a real commitment.

 12 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: The person in the front, and

 13 do you have a question in the back, and then someone

 14 over here?

 15 MS. CHEES: Hello. My name is Niakia Chees, and

 16 I'm with the Better Business Bureau, and I'm laughing to

 17 myself. Recently what we do is we provide reports to

 18 the public to help them out, to help them know if a

 19 company is a scam and do scam alerts, so we don't have a

 20 lot of money to, as this gentleman suggests, hire

 21 someone.

 22 You say the media is a great way to get messages

 23 out, but a lot of times we find -- we just started

 24 giving out Hispanic reliability reports, like Spanish

 25 reports so Hispanic consumers can call us up and we can

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 86

 1 let them know if a company has complaints and things

 2 like that.

 3 To spend a press release to the media, no

 4 offense to anyone, saying we give reports in Spanish, it

 5 would never go anywhere, but if there's a scam or

 6 something juicy they'll be there. What happens if you

 7 have no resources? You can call the Better Business

 8 Bureau and get a report before you use a company. You

 9 can call and see if they have complaints. You can call

 10 and see if this is a reliable company.

 11 How do you get that message out when you have no

 12 money, when you can't hire a staff, you can't have two

 13 different sets of literature, one to go out to one

 14 demographic and the other. What is next?

 15 MR. MUSE: I like door to door. That's pretty

 16 cool.

 17 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Every chance we get that's

 18 possible to tell the public that you are one of the

 19 resources, including in Spanish media. We try to do

 20 that if it's any consolation.

 21 MS. MONTES: One of the things we have found in

 22 California is it's very important to do media briefing

 23 is that you have to educate the media on the issues.

 24 It's true that when you address an issue, if it doesn't

 25 sound sexy, it may not get covered, and so what we have

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 87

 1 found to be very, very effective is to do a media

 2 briefing where we actually bring media together and

 3 educate them on these issues and we feed them and that

 4 has worked.

 5 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: You might want to state your

 6 name for her purposes.

 7 MS. MONTES: My name is Anna Montes, M O N T E

 8 S, and I'll be speaking on the next panel so I have a

 9 lot of things I want to talk about, and I'm going to

 10 roll.

 11 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: One question in the back of

 12 the room and the lady over here and the gentleman.

 13 MS. HETZER: Hi, I'm Maurene Hetzer, H E T Z E

 14 R, from MBNA America in Wilmington, Delaware, and my

 15 question is: We talked a little bit about the increased

 16 purchasing power that we see within the Latino and

 17 Hispanic. What is the preferred financial vehicle by

 18 that community base for those, that increased purchasing

 19 power?

 20 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: I heard someone say dollars.

 21 Does anyone have any comments?

 22 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: I know credit card use is

 23 not as high as the Latino community.

 24 MS. HETZER: That's not the answer I wanted.

 25 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: Going back to -- maybe that

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 88

 1 wasn't the answer you wanted, but once again the HACR

 2 report that came out, and you go to HOT.org really one

 3 of the big laggers in outreaches of the community were

 4 financial institutions.

 5 In fact what they said was for example the

 6 financial institutions spend 3.1 billion dollars in

 7 advertising their products, whether they're mutual

 8 funds, credit cards whereas they only spend $67 million

 9 on the Latino community.

 10 So in order to make money, you've got to spend

 11 money, and clearly the financial institutions aren't

 12 doing so.

 13 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: It's also the message that

 14 you put out there that Latinos tend to believe people

 15 with authority, and if you can -- and trust people, I

 16 think if you can come across with your message that this

 17 is safe, reliable, you can trust us, I mean that has to

 18 be part of your message because otherwise you're not

 19 going to reach the community.

 20 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: And if it helps, I don't

 21 expect you to spell my last name correctly, but the

 22 first name is P A B L O, not Pablo table. I get a lot

 23 of those in the mail.

 24 We had a question back here and then the last

 25 question over there.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 89

 1 MS. DAVIS: Cindy Davis, San Diego City

 2 Attorneys Office, the consumer and environmental

 3 protection unit. I'm coming at this as a prosecutor and

 4 was interested where you previously made some remarks

 5 about creating strategic partnerships and you had

 6 mentioned Union Bank as one of your partners.

 7 In the prosecutors world we have to be fairly

 8 careful about creating, quote, strategic partnerships in

 9 that these entities ultimately may become defendants in

 10 the future case, you would not want our logo or anything

 11 associated with that.

 12 Do you have any suggestions for the prosecutors

 13 in the audience with respect to the kinds of strategic

 14 partnerships because being a government agency, we're

 15 facing the same budget situation that I'm sure the rest

 16 of you are. We would love to hire someone to translate

 17 our brochures and our PR materials. That's simply not

 18 going.

 19 My investigator speaks Spanish. I write them.

 20 She translates them. That's as good as it's going to

 21 get from our department.

 22 Do you have any suggestions with regard to

 23 partnerships that would make sense for prosecutors to

 24 get messages out particularly with respect to consumer

 25 fraud issues?

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 90

 1 We do a very good job getting free PR from your

 2 media and that we highlight stories. We usually have

 3 juicy stories that we can tag on consumer tips on to,

 4 but as far as print materials, the expense is just not

 5 in our budget, and I don't know if you have any

 6 suggestions in that regard.

 7 MR. VASQUEZ-AJMAC: We're right now in the

 8 middle of wrapping up a year long project for the child

 9 support enforcement, which is about prosecution, and so

 10 one of the things that we're doing for them that might

 11 be helpful to you and your colleagues is, first of all,

 12 we're actually doing an environmental scan. They're

 13 doing a lot of good work all over, and the whole idea is

 14 to get sorry dead broke parents out there to fulfill

 15 their obligation.

 16 So, first of all, what I would suggest is rather

 17 than reinventing the wheel, see what other people are

 18 doing, check out -- that was part of our assignment was

 19 to see what the office were doing. This project was to

 20 help reach out to African Americans, Asians, Latinos and

 21 a host of other groups. That would be one thing.

 22 To answer your question specifically it seems

 23 that some of your natural allies could be the Hispanic

 24 Bar Association. There are also major important

 25 organizations out in our communities, civil rights group

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 91

 1 like MALDF, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund,

 2 very strong around the nation, specifically LA.

 3 LULAC is another group. What I would say is

 4 part of the whole thing on relationship building is you

 5 have to get out there. Take advantage of all these

 6 conferences to begin to build those personal

 7 relationships. Then once you have those relationships,

 8 go to them, ask for the favor.

 9 MR. FRANCO: I would just add one other to that

 10 list, and that's other government agencies, strategic

 11 alliances with other governmental agencies who have

 12 certain -- where you have missions that overlap and

 13 strategies that can be deployed using other funding as

 14 well.

 15 MS. BENCOMO LOBACO: What about your cities, the

 16 public libraries working with community groups,

 17 community centers? I think that those are -- even your

 18 churches.

 19 MR. MUSE: Or trade associations if you don't

 20 have a particular company involved.

 21 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: We have one last question,

 22 we're unfortunately running out of time, for the

 23 gentleman. Final question for you.

 24 I'm sorry, did you want to address something

 25 about this? Yes, yes, one final quick comment and then

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 92

 1 the final comment to you.

 2 MS. RUTH STEMMLE: I happen to work with the

 3 State's Attorneys Office in Prince George's County, 67

 4 prosecutors in our county, and I am their Latino

 5 outreach person for that office, and what we do, we

 6 organize regular community forums with a community.

 7 We reach out to the community agencies in the

 8 area and invite them to be part of this community, but

 9 in some cases educational forums and opportunity to tell

 10 us what their concerns are, and we identify problems and

 11 the issues that we can address with them, and deal with

 12 churches.

 13 We have strong partnerships with the Arch

 14 Diocese of Washington in that area. We work for the

 15 colleges. We reach out to the community in the school

 16 systems by meeting their principal and the students

 17 themselves in their individual student meetings. We

 18 work with the government agencies, local government

 19 agencies in our county.

 20 We identify resources to apply for additional

 21 funding. For additional -- Air Force in reaching out to

 22 the community, and a number of things that I like to

 23 talk to you about that. It's a very exciting, and I

 24 think a very successful initiative that we have there.

 25 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Thanks. One final question

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 93

 1 for you.

 2 MR. ORIFILA: I'm Fernando Orfila, and there's

 3 going to be a teaser, what we call in the business, and

 4 I'm a reporter for Negocios, and I'm going to be with

 5 Anna the next panel, but actually answering your

 6 question from the Better Business Bureau, it's not so

 7 difficult.

 8 Basically give them a list with a reporter name

 9 or the assignment desk name. That will be it, and

 10 actually my main problem with the Better Business Bureau

 11 is from time to time I contact you, no, no, no, and

 12 sometimes you don't have anybody to speak with me in

 13 Spanish, and that's my main problem, and we're going to

 14 discuss it in the next panel if you want, but that's one

 15 of the things that we from the media see.

 16 Okay, I can talk about this but who is going to

 17 be my specialist, who is going to be my, I don't know,

 18 my Maria.

 19 MR. ZYLBERGLAIT: Thank you. You should all

 20 take advantage of the break time to network to hobnob,

 21 to get all these things together, but not before we give

 22 a great round of applause to our panelists.

 23 (Applause.)

 24 (Break in the proceedings.)

 25

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 94

 1 PANEL DISCUSSION: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS WITH

 2 HISPANIC AUDIENCES.

 3

 4

 5 PANEL MEMBERS

 6

 7 MARIA RODRIGUEZ, President, Vanguard Communications

 8 ROBERT E. BARD, President and CEO, Latino Style Magazine

 9 JUDY J. CHAPA, Senior Advisor for Money Smart, FDIC

 10 ANA M. MONTES, Director, Technology and Consumer

 11 Education, Latino Issues Forum

 12 FERNANDO ORFILA, Personal Finances Reporter and Analyst,

 13 Univision

 14 TERESA A. SANTIAGO, Chairperson and Executive Director,

 15 New York State Consumer Protection Board

 16

 17

 18 MS. SHANOFF: All right. I think we're ready to

 19 start, probably a few late comers, and that will be just

 20 fine.

 21 I am delighted to introduce to you, to start the

 22 second half of our afternoon, and introduce Maria

 23 Rodriguez. Raise your hand.

 24 Maria is the President and owner of Vanguard

 25 Communications, a full service public relations firm

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 95

 1 that is committed to the marketing and promotion of

 2 social issues. I want you to know that in March 2003

 3 Vanguard became the first Hispanic woman owned firm to

 4 earn the highly coveted PR Week PR Agency of the Year

 5 Award, and I think you'll see leadership in action this

 6 afternoon as Maria takes on this panel.

 7 So please join me in welcoming Maria Rodriguez,

 8 Robert Bard, Judy Chapa, Anna Montes, Fernando Orfila

 9 and Teresa Santiago.

 10 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, and welcome to the

 11 second panel of today's session. I think that there

 12 probably will be a little bit of overlap on some of the

 13 things that we've talked about in the first panel, but I

 14 actually think that's a good thing because certainly the

 15 marketers in the room, now that we have to hear things

 16 three, four maybe five times before we actually process

 17 that information and get it and be able to walk away

 18 from here today and remember some of the key points that

 19 were raised.

 20 I want to start by first thanking the FTC for

 21 putting together this forum because it really -- I think

 22 everyone when they walk away from here will feel like

 23 they learned a lot, and it says a lot about the

 24 leadership of the agency, that they've pulled these

 25 incredible speakers, all of these speakers, both panels

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 96

 1 together, and then tomorrow's panel in terms of their

 2 commitment to the community, to these issues and to

 3 their partners, to all the other agencies and nonprofit

 4 organizations and corporations who are out there trying

 5 to learn how to best do this.

 6 I had the pleasure of speaking with each one of

 7 my panelists before today's panel so I could learn a

 8 little bit about them and a little bit about their

 9 experience, and I'm here to tell you that you're in for

 10 a treat because these folks are incredibly impressive.

 11 They really know what they're doing, and they do it very

 12 well.

 13 Robert Bard, I'm going to start to my right, is

 14 president and CEO of Latino Style Magazine, and he

 15 happens to have it right here for those of you that

 16 aren't familiar with it. I'm sure you are.

 17 Latino Style has a unique market focus. It

 18 really focuses exclusively on the Latino professional

 19 working woman and on Latino business owners, but in

 20 addition to that, Robert started the Bard Company which

 21 is a consulting public affairs, public relations

 22 marketing firm advertising that specializes in the

 23 Hispanic market.

 24 Judy Chapa is the Senior Advisor for Outreach to

 25 Hispanic Populations in the United States for a program

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 97

 1 called Money Smart, which is of the Federal Deposit

 2 Insurance Corporation, the FDIC. It's a financial

 3 education program. It's primarily designed to educate

 4 low and moderate income people about basic money

 5 management and banking issues.

 6 She's worked also in communications marketing

 7 and PR in many settings, including government, corporate

 8 and nonprofit sectors so she brings a wealth of that

 9 experience to us today.

 10 Anna Montes is the director of technology and

 11 consumer education at the Latino Issues Forum. We've

 12 talked a lot already today about the divisional divide.

 13 Anna is a real expert in this. Her forum is a nonprofit

 14 public policy and advocacy institute. It's based in San

 15 Francisco, but they work on behalf of the Latino

 16 community across the state of California and even at

 17 times on a national level.

 18 Anna brings to the panel also lots of experience

 19 particularly working with hard to reach communities,

 20 especially those in rural and low income communities.

 21 Fernando Orfila is the business reporter with

 22 Univision, and he serves as the editor of the money

 23 section or the Univision.com. In addition to reporting

 24 for Univision's local station in Miami, some of you may

 25 recognize him because he appears twice a month on

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 98

 1 Univision's national program called "Despierta America"

 2 America, and on that program he talks about personal

 3 finances and economic issues that affect the Hispanic

 4 community.

 5 And he may get embarrassed by me saying this,

 6 but just this week he became the first Hispanic

 7 television journalist to win the Excellence in Financial

 8 Journalism Award from the New York State Society of

 9 Certified Public Accountants.

 10 MR. ORFILA: Thank you.

 11 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Congratulations, Fernando.

 12 MR. ORFILA: Thank you.

 13 JUDGE: Teresa Santiago is the chair and

 14 executive director of the New York State Consumer Board,

 15 and it is considered the State's top consumer watch

 16 dog. She is also the driving force behind Comite

 17 Noviembre, Puerto Rican Heritage Month. It's a

 18 nonprofit organization that promotes and commemorates

 19 Puerto Rican heritage across the country.

 20 Teresa also brings a wealth of experience beyond

 21 her current role, both in relationships and working with

 22 the media, with civic organizations, with community

 23 organizations and nonprofit and private sector agencies.

 24 So I welcome all of the panelists here today and

 25 look forward to a really fascinating discussion.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 99

 1 We're going to get right into a couple of the

 2 questions focused on how do we do this well, how do we

 3 particularly combat the strategies that are being used

 4 by corporations with lots of money to put these scams

 5 out there to the Latino community?

 6 And I thought I would start with Anna Montes,

 7 who has worked really hard on a calling card scam in

 8 California. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about

 9 what were the keys to its success.

 10 MS. MONTES: Sure. This is actually part of a

 11 state wide campaign to address a number of different

 12 issues that impact the limited English speaking

 13 community in California, and in California, calling

 14 cards is still a very, very vague issue in terms of how

 15 marketing is done.

 16 I was really happy to hear that the concern, one

 17 of the concerns today is, How do you get the message out

 18 that there are ways to get help, and also the fact that

 19 we have to recognize that that is a big scam that's

 20 impacting the Latino community.

 21 So what we've done actually, we are part of a

 22 campaign that, first of all, was funded by a settlement

 23 against two telecommunication companies that slammed and

 24 crammed Asian and Latino communities in language, and

 25 we're actually co-sponsoring a piece of legislation

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 100

 1 called Truth in Advertising, by the way. If you sell in

 2 language you should buy terms and conditions, but

 3 anyway.

 4 So what we did was as part of the settlement, we

 5 worked out an agreement that a community foundation

 6 would administer a community based outreach program

 7 because if you're really talking about reaching the hard

 8 to serve, limited English speaking and poor community

 9 because dollars is not just in high income. We're

 10 talking about dollars because of numbers, and that's why

 11 they're going after that particular community.

 12 So you need to work with community based

 13 organizations, so our strategy has been to train and

 14 fund community based organizations on how to do consumer

 15 education and how to do complaint resolution working in

 16 partnership with various agencies.

 17 We also developed very, very simple fact sheets,

 18 and I was really happy to see the brochures out there

 19 because they were very, very simple. There were

 20 materials that people will pick up, that people will

 21 read, and so what we did is we developed very simple --

 22 I didn't bring the language ones because we did nine

 23 fact sheets. We do nine languages in California, but

 24 they're just really really simple.

 25 We tried to do nice graphics. We did first of

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 101

 1 all what is a prepaid phone call. What is a calling

 2 card because companies also are targeting Latinos with

 3 company cards, and they're misleading communities or

 4 misleading people on what you actually get from the

 5 calling card.

 6 As a matter of fact, we just got two consumers

 7 back over $5,000 because of misleading information on

 8 the calling card. How do we do that? Latino issues

 9 didn't do that. The community based organizations that

 10 we worked with did that. They participated in a

 11 training and they learned about the issues and then they

 12 learned how to do some complaint resolution and they did

 13 outreach into their community because one of the other

 14 things that's really important to us in terms of being

 15 successful in getting this information out is that you

 16 need to reach people that people trust.

 17 And so that's why it was really important for to

 18 us do it in community based organizations, community

 19 based organizations that do have offices in local

 20 community, that to do outreach to local communities.

 21 Now, the other thing that you also have to

 22 remember because this is a very important strategy, and

 23 I'm really recommending this strategy, is that you

 24 cannot expect community based organizations to take your

 25 information, to learn your issues and provide that

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 102

 1 service for free.

 2 And the reason it's not going to happen and the

 3 reason why it's not going to happen is because even

 4 though they are providing information, even though they

 5 are advocates, it's another task, and it's a task that

 6 requires staff time and training, so that's what we

 7 did. It's cost efficient. It works, and the word does

 8 get out.

 9 We also utilized ethnic media, span language

 10 media. Our most successful effort was an interview with

 11 a client on Univision, generated over 200 phone calls.

 12 We were going crazy trying to gets names and numbers out

 13 to people throughout California because the calls came

 14 from throughout California.

 15 We also have a media campaign that we put

 16 together to put out this information which has been

 17 very, very effective. I talked about doing media

 18 training. You do need to educate the media on these

 19 issues because it's -- who hears about slamming and

 20 cramming now? You don't hear about that.

 21 Who hears about the prepaid phone calls? Who

 22 hears about calling cards scams? You don't hear about

 23 it. You don't hear about it until something really

 24 happens, so with the media briefing that we did and are

 25 continuing to do, we are able to get this information

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 103

 1 out and let people know that not only are we aware that

 2 this is happening, but there's somebody in your

 3 community that you can call who is bilingual, who can

 4 talk to you.

 5 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Thanks, Anna. Judy, you've been

 6 working with Money Smart particularly with low and

 7 moderate income Latinos. Could you talk a little bit

 8 about the keys to success of that program?

 9 MS. CHAPA: Yes. Actually a lot of what Anna

 10 just mentioned sounded very familiar, and I would say

 11 that some of the keys to our success has been, number 1,

 12 partnerships. I express that in all the aspects that

 13 I've done, our partnerships with the nonprofit

 14 organizations and to Anna's point, nonprofit

 15 organizations I think are becoming like the end user and

 16 the end all to everybody.

 17 And Anna brought up a good point. You can't

 18 expect these organizations to continue to do everything

 19 for either corporations or government agencies and not

 20 expect to get anything back in return because they're

 21 already taxed to the max, and they're already providing

 22 their own services so when you come to them, even if

 23 you're a government agency and you're giving them a

 24 great product and they want to help you, they may not

 25 have the resources in terms of man-hours or people to be

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 104

 1 able to do that.

 2 And unfortunately, another sad reality is

 3 government agencies don't always have the budgets that

 4 you need, so a new program that we be launching at FDIC

 5 is the Money Smart volunteer program, so my compromise

 6 was, okay, I cannot give the nonprofit organizations

 7 that we're partnering with monies, but I can give them

 8 trained volunteers so that those organizations that we

 9 currently partner with, if they need help, we will help

 10 them by providing them with trained volunteers to help

 11 teach Money Smart.

 12 For those of you don't know, I probably should

 13 have started off by telling you that Money Smart is a

 14 ten module education that takes you all the way from why

 15 should you have a financial relationship with a

 16 financial institution or credit union all the way to

 17 buying your house, what are your rights as a consumer,

 18 et cetera.

 19 And the curriculum -- another reason for the

 20 success is the curriculum is very basic. It's

 21 flexible. It has interactive exercises. The

 22 participants in the class can teach, can take part in

 23 how to write a check, how to balance a checkbook, et

 24 cetera.

 25 Another thing is that we've made it available in

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 105

 1 five languages. Spanish was the first language that we

 2 created it into. It's also Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean

 3 and I'm missing one. Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, I'm

 4 missing a language. No. English. Spanish and English,

 5 that's five okay. Money Smart works.

 6 And the most important thing about this program

 7 is that it's free, so everybody loves free, and we're

 8 also getting ready to make this available online on an

 9 interactive web site which will be available in English

 10 and Spanish, and we recognize the divide in working with

 11 a nonprofit organization, so we're also working to try

 12 and provide nonprofit organizations with computers so

 13 that they have increased access to being able to use our

 14 products.

 15 So I think to just regroup, partnerships and

 16 getting someone, as Anna said, that the consumers trust

 17 because financial institutions are horrible places to be

 18 unbanked and element of trust is key in trying to

 19 establish a meaningful relationship, and it's not about

 20 getting them educated, but it's also about getting them

 21 into the bank.

 22 So the other partnerships that have been

 23 important to us is we solicit all of our federally

 24 insured banks which are all of those FDIC things you see

 25 at the banks, all of those members are also Money Smart

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 106

 1 partners so we have our bankers who go out and teach

 2 bilingually, in Spanish.

 3 Instead of waiting for customers to come into

 4 our banks, we're having our bankers go out into the

 5 community as a demonstration of the value we do want to

 6 give to our customers and we're able to communicate to

 7 you in your language, which we also find to be very,

 8 very helpful.

 9 So those are the some of the things that we

 10 consider to make our program a success.

 11 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Teresa, one of the communities

 12 that is really difficult to reach are new immigrant, and

 13 you have been trying to educate that community about

 14 immigration consulting fraud.

 15 And I think it would be great to hear about what

 16 you have done here because that's such a difficult group

 17 to reach.

 18 MS. SANTIAGO: First of all, I am the government

 19 agency with a very small budget and very limited

 20 resources, so to reiterate what Judy and Anna are saying

 21 about partnerships, that's how I survive. That's how

 22 this agency survives. We partner with other agencies.

 23 We partner with community based organizations, and

 24 that's how this immigration consulting fraud, education

 25 -- comprehensive education program has been developed.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 107

 1 And I have my brochures too so I'll just show

 2 them off, and we have them in several other languages

 3 also, but we kicked it off in Hispanic community because

 4 that's where the greatest need was.

 5 What we did was just that. We partnered with --

 6 we have a government citizenship unit this. They

 7 brought it to our attention first and said, This is

 8 happening in our communication. We have an outreach

 9 unit that works directly in the community with the

 10 citizenship unit.

 11 The whole translation piece that we talked about

 12 before we work in conjunction with these agencies. We

 13 tell them, Would you read this, does this sound the way

 14 it should be. We have those relationships with other

 15 agencies within the state of New York.

 16 So this project basically came from one other

 17 agency bringing us the issue that there were pockets in

 18 the State of New York where new immigrants, specifically

 19 Latino immigrants, were being taken by immigration

 20 consulting fraud and being taken for thousands of

 21 dollars.

 22 So we sat down. We said -- the agencies all

 23 came together and we sat down and talked about it and we

 24 said, Well, how do we do this, how do we -- once they're

 25 taken, it's very, very difficult to get any money back

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 108

 1 because these so-called consultants take your money and

 2 then they're gone, so to go after them and to try to get

 3 money back for these new immigrants, it's not going to

 4 happen, so -- or if it happens, it's in a very rare

 5 situation.

 6 So what we did is, well, the next step is

 7 education and what do we want to tell them and how do we

 8 tell them, so again it became a very -- we talked about

 9 what was the issue, what was the message. We made it

 10 very simple. We made it in different languages.

 11 Specifically we launched it as a matter of fact

 12 a few weeks ago at the government's mansion. Governor

 13 Pataki was there. He launched it. We also used a

 14 celebrity, a Miss Universe who is of Dominican descent,

 15 she there to launch this event with us, so all of the

 16 things that we heard before we've used.

 17 We have to partner with different organizations

 18 and media partners, but the most important part of this

 19 program was our relationship with the community based

 20 organizations. They were the ones that gave us

 21 credibility. They're the ones that we're going to use

 22 to go into the communities, to make sure that when we go

 23 into that community, there has been someone that has had

 24 a relationship, that has built a relationship.

 25 And so if there are any fears about government

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 109

 1 agencies going into these communities or skepticism, that

 2 that kind of like goes away, so it's very important that

 3 we do deal -- we do make those partnerships.

 4 All this to say, there is a need to make sure

 5 that whether you're a government agency or a community

 6 based organizations or whatever service you provide,

 7 that you to do a grass root campaign. You have to go to

 8 the community. The community is not going to come to

 9 you, especially new immigrants. They don't know that --

 10 they're not versed in the laws of this country. They

 11 are not versed in the language.

 12 They don't understand the language, so you have

 13 to make it a point to go out to the community, and again

 14 even if you're a government agency, find other

 15 government agencies that will partner with you to make

 16 your message clear and to bring it out to the

 17 community.

 18 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Thanks, Teresa. Robert, you

 19 deal with a very different audience. Latino Style has a

 20 more highly educated audience, and you have an upcoming

 21 big story on consumer fraud, and I think you kind of

 22 approached that uniquely to a strategic alliance that I

 23 think the group would love to hear that.

 24 MR. BARD: Before we get there, can I see a show

 25 of hands, how many of you think you've gotten ripped off

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 110

 1 at some point? And how many of you think that you

 2 addressed the action and were successful to your

 3 liking? How many of you are monolingual Spanish

 4 speakers?

 5 See, fraud and consumer fraud particularly

 6 effects every single one of us, and if you add to it the

 7 fact that we have a population that is not familiar with

 8 the language, not familiar with the system, and in many

 9 cases doesn't even want to be found, chances are that

 10 you would be able to address something like this is not

 11 going to happen unless you bring together massive

 12 resources.

 13 And on the work that we do with our magazine,

 14 it's a little bit different. We look -- the major issue

 15 that we are looking at in fraud is the issue of identity

 16 theft. That is really pervasive and a major issue, and

 17 we've been able to enter a partnership with both the FBI

 18 and the Secret Service to work on a program.

 19 If I tell somebody in the Latino community, Hey,

 20 I'm working with the FBI, you want me to help you out,

 21 it's like -- I think one of the crucial things that we

 22 need to do is to put the face -- because people think

 23 that consumer fraud is you just lost a couple dollars.

 24 Consumer fraud can be so extremely dangerous. I

 25 had a personal experience with that. I had a lady that

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 111

 1 worked for me in Los Angeles when I was based there who,

 2 her and her husband, gave all their money, all their

 3 funds, to a supposed attorney that was doing their

 4 naturalization to discover -- and then one day she comes

 5 to the office and she is telling me, Oh, I'm so happy,

 6 look, we got all our cards, all our papers, and she

 7 shows me her card.

 8 And I immediately see it's -- you could have

 9 done it on a Xerox machine. Turns out that it was a

 10 fraud, and in Los Angeles that happened at the time we

 11 were having the naturalization, that happened all over

 12 the place.

 13 The most effective way that we found at that

 14 point in time to get the message out was, one, through

 15 community organizations like Teresa and Judy have spoken

 16 about, but at the same time the media was extremely

 17 helpful, and Univision particularly took a major lead

 18 role in addressing that issue.

 19 But the fact is that for consumer fraud to be

 20 able to be addressed in our community and to begin to

 21 really educate our community, you really need to work

 22 with the organizations to get the community trust, and

 23 when we put our programs together, after that happened

 24 to us, to somebody that I knew, we got involved in

 25 putting a program together in LA, and this was like the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 112

 1 early 80s.

 2 And I found that the most effective way to work

 3 was through the churches, and we took the time to go and

 4 meet with our Arch Bishop Mahoney, and he was willing to

 5 give us the time and the space at the church to talk to

 6 the people and tell them, This is really a problem that

 7 you have to be aware of, but at the same time we have

 8 major organizations in this country that really work

 9 very hard on these issues, and they have a very good

 10 relationship with the media.

 11 One of the major organizations of course the

 12 National Council of Latino that is headquartered here in

 13 D.C., and is probably one of the community association

 14 organizations. The other one is LULAC, the League of

 15 United Latino American Citizens, and they disseminated a

 16 lot of the information.

 17 For the media the problem is this. For you to

 18 be able to get a message to the non English speaker,

 19 besides using television, you probably -- the little

 20 community papers would be the people that you would work

 21 with and radio stations in how to package your message

 22 that is an information message that can feel

 23 programming.

 24 That is not like a PSA kind of thing, that you

 25 feel you're giving information that it's programming,

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 113

 1 that the people will be interested in, and you put a

 2 face to it and you find somebody who is willing to talk

 3 about it, and I'm sure that across the families, you

 4 find that you have to reach them on many different

 5 levels.

 6 For us any program that we do, we're very

 7 fortunate that we reach the household through the head

 8 of the household whether -- by the head of the household

 9 I mean the woman because the woman is the person -- they

 10 say that the man is the head of the household. Well,

 11 you know, the woman is the neck, and points the head

 12 anywhere she wants to, so you need to reach the

 13 mothers.

 14 Another vehicle that we use fairly effectively

 15 is we went through the schools and talked to the

 16 children. For new immigrants sometimes the children are

 17 the best source of information, and they can help their

 18 parents and guide their parents in some of these

 19 issues.

 20 I don't think that a peer media approach will

 21 work. I think that it will be tuned out after awhile,

 22 but I think a media approach that is balanced with

 23 community organizations participation, and if you

 24 involve -- everybody talks well, in the Hispanic

 25 community and you know all of us -- well, I don't want

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 114

 1 to say all of us, a lot of us end up going to church at

 2 one time or another, and a couple of words there, and

 3 even and I use the church media.

 4 The church has their own media to reach the

 5 public, and they can distribute that as well.

 6 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Thanks. Fernando, you cover

 7 these issues every day, and sometimes they can be, no

 8 offense, but a little bit dry, these issues, so what

 9 advice do you have in terms of how to frame the message

 10 so that folks will be more ready to hear it basically?

 11 MR. ORFILA: What I'm going to do was what

 12 Robert did was account. First, as a reporter I need to

 13 know my audience, so let's see, how many people from

 14 here are in the federal government and how many people

 15 are in local government.

 16 Let's go for federal. Let's go for local and

 17 let's go for grass roots or private companies, three of

 18 them, a few of them. That's the first thing you have to

 19 know about your audience is who are you going to, and if

 20 I ask how many of you have a credit card, okay?

 21 So it doesn't matter where you are. If you're

 22 in Miami, if you're working for a local station or if

 23 you're in Washington working for the federal department,

 24 what matters is what the basic things, so previously we

 25 hear that -- we heard that we have to segregate the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 115

 1 different audience that we have, and actually I do the

 2 opposite.

 3 I'm a reporter and I have to go for at least 70

 4 percent of the audience, so I go for the basics. I have

 5 to go for the basic Spanish. That was a question all

 6 over last -- at the last forum that we have, and it was

 7 in the news room, what we do is we ask ourselves, I have

 8 a Dominican on my side, I have a Columbian, I'm

 9 Argentinian, could we use this word, no, we can't. Can

 10 we use this, yeah, we should.

 11 And the other thing is dictionary. The

 12 dictionary, it's beautiful. It's beautiful, and you can

 13 get it online REA.COM, and it's online, and you can

 14 check any word. If it doesn't appear there, you

 15 shouldn't be using it. So, huh? Basically that.

 16 And in money matters, when I ask about credit

 17 cards, money matters affect every people, poor families

 18 and middle sized families and rich families, and one

 19 thing that we generally don't understand about the

 20 Hispanic population is we think that the poor families

 21 are the ones that have more problems financially

 22 talking.

 23 And actually the latest research that I saw was

 24 that the families getting from 50,000 and up were the

 25 ones with the worst scenario, because when you have --

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 116

 1 you don't have, you cannot expend, and you have to

 2 manage with that much. When you have, the problem is

 3 that you tend to forget how much do you have and you

 4 start spending with credit cards and things like that or

 5 loans, and then you cannot manage the debt that you get

 6 into.

 7 Another thing that I usually cover is the ID

 8 theft. I know I was talking to some people here on the

 9 break, that I tend to take it very seriously and very

 10 carefully because we Hispanics do this too, the

 11 Hispanics, as the person that worked with you, they

 12 could get Social Security, fake Social Security cards

 13 because they need it to work, so we cannot take that

 14 issue as, Hey, there are thefts over there taking your

 15 identity because they could be my neighborhood.

 16 So we have to say, How to protect yourself and

 17 show them a different way also to go for it. For

 18 instance, one of my -- we talk about our sexist stories

 19 and things like that. In the spirit of America I talk

 20 about the ITIN. I don't know if anybody here knows

 21 about it.

 22 It's an individual tax identification number

 23 that you could get even though if you're an undocumented

 24 immigrant to pay taxes, and you can use that for credit

 25 reasons and things like that, and I talk about that in

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 117

 1 the Spirit of America, and my office is ten minutes from

 2 the studio, and within those ten minutes, I received

 3 three different calls, and the last one was from the IRS

 4 saying, What did you talk about on the Spirit of

 5 America, our 800 number is burning.

 6 So I was talking about the ITIN, how to get --

 7 first actually 50 percent of the undocumented people by

 8 the IRS numbers have this number, but the other half

 9 they don't know, so ID theft we have to take -- from my

 10 perspective we have to take this matter very seriously

 11 and very carefully because we don't want to patronize

 12 the Hispanics talking about this, and we don't want to

 13 point at them saying, Hey, what are you doing, so it's a

 14 very difficult issue. I just wanted say that.

 15 MS. CHAPA: Can I? What you were talking about

 16 in terms of how the IRS does -- because it goes down

 17 with a maticula card (phonetic), and the issue with that

 18 is that the maticula card is only recognized by certain

 19 councils and not all of them, and it varies from state

 20 to state so that has become an issue.

 21 In terms of, before anybody asks, our policy is

 22 we allow individual banks to make that decision for

 23 themselves, so you know, that's where we come down on

 24 that, but that's why probably maybe that local office

 25 didn't, but there are many, many states and banks that

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 118

 1 do accept that because that's why I'm familiar with it

 2 because that's a form that many banks do accept and we

 3 encourage that in terms of opening a checking account.

 4 MR. ORFILA: Letter of term was a vote I think

 5 that you could actually call or send an Email saying if

 6 you want it --

 7 MS. CHAPA: When I was still with the Department

 8 of Treasury, that's why I know about it. And the other

 9 point I wanted to make real quick is the fact that you

 10 said people with money get in trouble because if you

 11 don't have it, you don't spend it.

 12 That's a unique characteristic to the Hispanic

 13 community because I was raised that because way we were

 14 raised cash. I didn't even have a credit card until I

 15 was 28 years old, and when I tell that to my non

 16 Hispanic friends, they freak out. It's like, how could

 17 you not have had a credit card, and the fact of the

 18 matter is if you don't -- my father said, If you can't

 19 afford to pay for it in cash, you don't need it.

 20 And so those kind of characteristics are very

 21 specific to the Hispanic community. Those numbers would

 22 not be the same if you look at the general market

 23 because it's quite the opposite. The non Hispanic

 24 market looks at, If I don't have it I can charge it and

 25 I can pay for it later so they do get in a lot of

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 119

 1 trouble the less money they have, and it's a cultural

 2 nuance, whatever that means, but still that is something

 3 very unique to our culture.

 4 MR. ORFILA: The thing that we have from our

 5 country in Latin America, and I think we discussed it

 6 over the phone. Maria, and you can use it is we are a

 7 cash based culture because in Argentina during the 80s,

 8 hyperinflation. It wasn't inflation, it was

 9 hyperinflation 3,000 points a year would make my money

 10 disappear so we don't use to have credit in Mexico.

 11 The same that we have an Ecuador and Venezuela,

 12 so the basic thing is, as I said before, you have to

 13 know your audience, and you have to use their background

 14 on your advantage over here.

 15 MR. BARD: One of the problems we have is that

 16 we love the most dangerous word that probably exists in

 17 any language, and that's something that Judy said. We

 18 like free. Free. Anything that's free, it's like a

 19 magnet that is impossible it seems to resist. Everybody

 20 -- you hear free everybody is there.

 21 MS. CHAPA: And every marketer knows that.

 22 MR. BARD: It's used in so many ways that make

 23 you believe that things are free when they really are

 24 not or try out for three months for free and then you

 25 can say you don't want it. Well, the fourth month they

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 120

 1 start charging you, and it turns out you were committed

 2 for a whole year.

 3 MS. CHAPA: Or you're really too lazy to take it

 4 back and you get right back to it. I mean, it's like

 5 the fourth month, you go, Okay, I'll just keep it it's

 6 easier.

 7 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Teresa?

 8 MS. SANTIAGO: Yes. Fernando touched on

 9 something in New York. It's becoming a fraud, a very

 10 terrible fraud which is their private companies selling

 11 identification cards anywhere from $95 to $350, and

 12 people they believe that it is a federal government

 13 card. It is a government sanctioned card, and we have

 14 gotten a slew of calls with this -- with these

 15 identification cards.

 16 And another thing I want to bring up, that the

 17 message we have been able to send out specifically on

 18 this particular issue, we have partnered with Shame On

 19 You, I don't know if you know New York Channel Two,

 20 Arnold Diaz, and he did an undercover story based on the

 21 information that we gave him, as well as Julius Desione

 22 (phonetic) did the same thing. I wanted to mention, I

 23 forgot to mention it before, is that Julius Desione has

 24 become a partner of this immigration consulting fraud,

 25 and they are going to be doing PSAs to inform the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 121

 1 community of our 800 number if they have any complaints

 2 or if they just want the information they can call our

 3 800 number and do it.

 4 Those media partners are crucial to getting the

 5 information out, so I just wanted to throw that out.

 6 MS. RODRIGUEZ: I wanted to -- go ahead.

 7 MR. BARD: One of the things I think is crucial

 8 to do, if you are a program manager that handles media

 9 for an organization, you need to establish personal

 10 relationships with the media because that is going to

 11 change the whole dynamic on how you get across and how

 12 often you get it across and whether you can get a

 13 station or the newspaper or a radio station to really

 14 endorse your issue.

 15 It is extremely difficult, for instance, to get

 16 the media to carry the whole load. No matter how much

 17 Univision wants to carry the message, you probably --

 18 it's an enterprise that is a money making enterprise, so

 19 you're not going to see your PSAs in prime time. You're

 20 going to see them at three o'clock in the morning or if

 21 you don't have a relationship that is integrated as part

 22 of the programming of the station, it's going to be very

 23 difficult to get in there.

 24 In newspapers, you look at community newspapers,

 25 it's extremely difficult to get something published

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 122

 1 unless you pay them because they're really struggling,

 2 and their space is really limited, and they really kind

 3 of service the account that supports them economically,

 4 but the relationships is what is crucial because instead

 5 of getting a PSA, at least in my opinion when I used to

 6 run programs like that, PSAs was my last venue of

 7 approach.

 8 I would just talk to the reporters. I would

 9 talk to the editors if that was a possibility for that

 10 kind of information and try to talk to them about the

 11 importance of the issue. And believe me, media, it's a

 12 very difficult -- it's a very different kind of a

 13 monster of business because it's not like a hardware

 14 store that you go there and you buy something and if you

 15 don't like it you can return it or throw it out.

 16 Media really impacts on the lives of people, and

 17 we change people's opinion, and we're the sources of

 18 information, so we have a role that is totally

 19 different, so no matter how mercenary you think the

 20 media is, the media will always recognize that the first

 21 mission is to serve the public.

 22 And once you establish a relationship with a

 23 reporter or a writer or a specialist or an organization

 24 actually, organizations have their own ways of

 25 disseminating things. These days most of us I think

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 123

 1 disseminate a lot of information through the Internet

 2 through different networks that we have that allow us to

 3 go to a lot of different places which leads me to

 4 another thing.

 5 The Internet these days we're making major

 6 efforts to get Hispanics and that do not speak English

 7 to get online, and if you get online, you know what is

 8 there. This major fraud that is going on right now --

 9 are you guys familiar with these cards I think Pfizer

 10 came out that you can buy a set price for your

 11 prescriptions? It's like an enrollment card.

 12 Well, they're selling those all over the place

 13 now, and they're being sold. You buy it here, and it

 14 turns out it's a company in Thailand that is doing that,

 15 and it's impossible to redress, so if you have

 16 information that you need to get out, you need to be

 17 consistent. You need to maintain it. You need to

 18 develop the relationships and make sure that every time

 19 the message gets out you pat the station or the paper or

 20 the radio station on the back because that kind of keeps

 21 the relationship rolling.

 22 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Teresa.

 23 MS. SANTIAGO: I agree 100 percent, but if

 24 they're going to give me a PSA, I'm going to take it. I

 25 don't know care what time the show is up, but again the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 124

 1 media relationships that we've been able to do are

 2 crucial to the message that we sent out, and again

 3 absolutely starting a dialogue, calling them, having

 4 them -- even if it's sometime a matter that we have a

 5 column right now, a monthly column which is the third

 6 Wednesday of every month, that came out of a luncheon.

 7 I was sitting next to the publisher, and we

 8 started talking about consumer fraud, and she said, You

 9 know what, let's partner, whatever the message you think

 10 we should be sending out there, let's do it again.

 11 I've been talking to Univision about the same

 12 thing. They're telling me they're getting hundreds of

 13 letters on consumer fraud. They want the Consumer

 14 Protection Board to help them answer these questions.

 15 We're the authority. We partner and this all comes from

 16 relationships.

 17 MR. ORFILA: Let me just add one thing. I'm

 18 sorry. Go ahead.

 19 MS. MONTES: Go ahead.

 20 MR. ORFILA: Basically I'm a reporter. I get

 21 paid to find information, but a lot of our audience,

 22 they don't know how to search, and if it is difficult

 23 for me to find information, imagine what's for them, so

 24 it's important for you to partner. I hear partnership.

 25 I think that I wrote it down a long time ago. The best

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 125

 1 partnership that you have is the news local media.

 2 You should have on your speed dial the

 3 television, the radio, the newspaper, the magazine, and

 4 you should know -- as Robert said you should know them.

 5 I know that it was said previously that you should take

 6 us to lunch, but I couldn't tell you that the Univision

 7 doesn't allow that, so don't go there, and I assume all

 8 the companies don't.

 9 I'm saying and seriously because sometimes if

 10 you go with an offer like that, the real reporter will

 11 say, Hey, what's up, give me the information, I will

 12 decide if it's important enough, and just step back.

 13 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Anna, before you chime in, I do

 14 want to say this. Fernando hasn't brought this up but

 15 he told me in conversation given that he is a business

 16 report at Univision, which is obviously one of the

 17 largest media to reach Latino communities, and he's

 18 probably going to be regret that I'm saying this, but he

 19 told me he doesn't get hardly anybody calling him to

 20 pitch a story.

 21 MS. CHAPA: Okay. With your permission.

 22 MR. ORFILA: Let me tell you, when I became the

 23 editor for the web site, the money section of our web

 24 site, I took I think it was two or three days getting

 25 the numbers of all the Hispanic Chambers of Commerce,

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 126

 1 locally, national everywhere. I sent faxes to any of

 2 those presenting myself saying, Hey, this is me, send me

 3 the information.

 4 Just the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the

 5 National Chamber of Commerce answered me, and that's the

 6 only fax that I received from. Let's assume there are

 7 two Chambers of Commerce per state, so we should have a

 8 hundred.

 9 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Anna?

 10 MS. MONTES: I just wanted say, I'm talking --

 11 when I'm talking about the press, I'm talking about the

 12 community newspapers. I'm talking about the local radio

 13 stations. They're extremely important in terms of

 14 putting information out to the community numbers and

 15 you're going to get a lot more bang for the buck if you

 16 put -- if you purchase ads in those newspapers than you

 17 will for a major daily ad.

 18 And I think that's where one of the problems

 19 lies, and that's a money saver for you. It's really,

 20 really important to put them in the bilingual press.

 21 When we do media briefings we have to do it with the

 22 local press, and we feed them. We'll have a continental

 23 breakfast or something.

 24 But the thing is I'm talking about a briefing,

 25 I'm talking about having speakers from the department

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 127

 1 come and talk about several issues, giving out material

 2 and educating them on why identity theft is such a big

 3 problem, why calling cards is such a big problem,

 4 because one of the things that we found, we did a

 5 national briefing on Latinos and AIDS and the media

 6 especially a lot of the traditional press would not --

 7 they were not covering it.

 8 And so it was an issue that was not reaching a

 9 lot of our local community members, so we did that

 10 national briefing, and we found that we were getting a

 11 lot of coverage after that. It was extremely successful

 12 for them to see how important it was to cover that

 13 issue, so that's primarily what I was directing that

 14 comment at.

 15 The other thing is you can find a lot of lists

 16 online, but a lot of times they're not current, and the

 17 other thing is is that you also have a lot of so-called

 18 community newspapers that's just regurgitating national

 19 news, so you really need to find the newspaper that's

 20 covering local issues.

 21 So how do you find those? Well, there are

 22 directories, and they're very good directories, but you

 23 also need to talk to communities about that. You need

 24 to talk to community based organizations about that

 25 because they do have relationships with the press, and

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 128

 1 they work with them on regular basis.

 2 The other thing I wanted to talk about is how to

 3 effectively utilize the Internet to get the message out

 4 and what we've done is we've created a web site called

 5 Community for Telecom Rights, and it's telecom rights, T

 6 E L E C O M R I G H T S.com, net, .org. We wouldn't get

 7 org. It is net. It's .net. Right now what we have on

 8 there is a list of all the organizations working on it,

 9 and it's pretty private right now, but we're going to be

 10 putting all of our materials on there in the eight

 11 languages as soon as we wrap up the year because we also

 12 were doing testing.

 13 So utilizing the Internet. The best use of the

 14 Internet to reach populations, especially limited

 15 English speaking as I stated before and as we've all

 16 been stating, is community based organizations, so that

 17 web site was created for the community based

 18 organizations, and even though it will be open up to the

 19 public later.

 20 It's a way to sustain keeping the information up

 21 there. It's a way to keep information posted on a

 22 regular basis, and it also is a way for the community

 23 based organizations to download the information as they

 24 need it, because you don't need to print 50,000 copies

 25 and have it sit in an office. You don't need to print

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 129

 1 500 copies and have it sit in an office.

 2 So we put all of the files online as PDF files

 3 for the community based organizations to be able to

 4 download them. We also created an extensive list of

 5 resources so the community based organizations can go on

 6 there and get direct links to agencies, to additional

 7 information, a lot of your information connected to it

 8 so they can go online and see it.

 9 So it's -- one of your expectations when you're

 10 putting on all the information online that's really very

 11 important. In California, a lot of our community

 12 members did not know who the California Public Utilities

 13 Commission is. They don't know who they are. They

 14 don't what they regulate. They don't know what they

 15 do. A lot of people don't know who you are. They don't

 16 know what you do, and they don't know what kind of

 17 information you put out so again those kinds of CBOs is

 18 really, really important.

 19 The other thing is staffing. You've got to have

 20 staff online, and I really caution using translation

 21 services where you give out an 800 number. People call

 22 in and they get kicked over to somebody else. In

 23 California we were doing that and people were calling an

 24 800 number and they talked to an individual who said,

 25 Hold on a minute, let me get somebody on, if you ever

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 130

 1 got a live voice and once people came on, callers hung

 2 up, and especially people who did not speak English hung

 3 up.

 4 The other thing is diversity training is really

 5 really important. You read need to make sure that

 6 people that do work with communities where culture is

 7 very, very important you really have to be sensitive to

 8 a lot of different things because they will put a child

 9 on the phone to speak for them. They will speak very,

 10 very slowly. They will ask you to repeat.

 11 We did a study, and I made calls to an 800

 12 number, Spanish speaking calls, and I got through in

 13 Spanish so I did okay, but I was told to go back to

 14 Mexico. I was told, Why are you calling, this is the

 15 California Public Utilities Commission, we only speak

 16 English here.

 17 I was told a lot of different things and we did

 18 the study after the PUC sent out a press release

 19 announcing their bilingual hotline, okay? So I think

 20 you really have to make sure that you utilize staff that

 21 are sensitive. If they're Spanish speaking, it's really

 22 important that they can -- they're not just book learned

 23 because you can tell.

 24 And also I don't understand my daughter right

 25 now, she's taking Spanish classes. She has a teacher

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 131

 1 who speaks Castellon Spanish, and she's always asking me

 2 for help. I said you know what, I've never heard that

 3 word in my life, don't even ask me, so you really have

 4 to be very sensitive to that.

 5 But that's what I wanted to say in terms of like

 6 staffing, translations. You test it. We use community

 7 based organizations to get the translations for this

 8 project, because in San Francisco we have people from a

 9 lot of different Latin American countries, so we did

 10 translations. We sent it out to the CBOs. Staff

 11 themselves tested it and then they sent it out to

 12 clients that tested and then it came back to us and we

 13 put it up online and were distributing it.

 14 But we're still -- you always have to test it.

 15 You always have to make sure that you document if

 16 there's any problems with the translations you're

 17 doing. Not all community based organizations can do

 18 translations but they know somebody who can, and it's

 19 also cost efficient that way as well.

 20 What you spend on a professional translator is

 21 probably going to cost four or five times more than what

 22 it's going to cost utilizing a community based

 23 organization. If they can't do it, find a translator,

 24 but still test it, and you have to test it in that

 25 community.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 132

 1 MS. RODRIGUEZ: You know, Teresa, you brought up

 2 this one particular group announced their bilingual

 3 hotline and then they didn't really have folks that

 4 really understood the community that would be calling

 5 understand. You learn from those kinds of mistakes, and

 6 I'm sure that everyone on the panel has seen some of the

 7 common mistakes, pitfalls that people make in trying to

 8 reach out to the Latino.

 9 And I would invite you to share one or two of

 10 those with the group that we can learn from. Teresa, do

 11 you want to go first?

 12 MS. SANTIAGO: When I came on board at the

 13 Consumer Protection Board, it was about a year ago, a

 14 little bit over a year, we have a wonderful call unit.

 15 They take over 20,000 calls a year, though we didn't

 16 have a bilingual person on the call unit. That changed

 17 quickly, and I added some other bilingual staff, and it

 18 is crucial to have sensitive people on the other line,

 19 even the call unit, even the non Spanish speaking call

 20 unit, and they are excellent.

 21 I'm very proud of our call unit. They handle --

 22 I have to tell you a little bit about the Consumer

 23 Protection Board. We are a 30 person agency. We are

 24 tiny compared to other state agencies, and the work that

 25 comes out of this agency is amazing, and it's because of

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 133

 1 the partnerships that we have been able to do with other

 2 state agencies that makes us work better, that makes us

 3 share resources, but again it's very important to --

 4 you're right, you cannot launch an 800 number, bilingual

 5 800 number, and I have my executive deputy here who will

 6 tell you that she -- we tested this. We made sure that

 7 the calls were coming in, that the phone was being

 8 answered and that everyone knew exactly what to do.

 9 We had drills about this because we didn't want

 10 to go through an embarrassment like that. There have

 11 been times where translations, yeah, we may use a word

 12 that was not appropriate, and immediately we changed

 13 that, but we also have the opportunity to work with

 14 other people like in the office. Right now we have a

 15 woman that's Honduran, a woman that's Peruvian, Puerto

 16 Rican, Columbian.

 17 So we really show the translations through

 18 everyone and we all come together and say, Okay, does

 19 this make sense and that's very, very important.

 20 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Other folks?

 21 MS. CHAPA: In terms of Hispanic outreach, I

 22 agree with everything that's been said, but I take it to

 23 the -- the grass root to the extreme, and maybe it's

 24 because most of my experience is in the corporate sector

 25 out in the communities, and yes, the community based

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 134

 1 organizations have been very, very supportive of all my

 2 efforts these 20 some odd years and big supporters of

 3 mine, but maybe it's because I've had fun industries

 4 alcohol, tobacco, banking, politics.

 5 But I think that you need to test it, but what I

 6 have also -- I do the research but I take it to the next

 7 level. I have gone out and I talk face-to-face with the

 8 consumers themselves. I've always had a start up. I've

 9 always been an office of one and grown from there, so

 10 I've never had colleagues that I can bounce things off.

 11 So what I do is I literally go out into the

 12 communities and talk to my consumers whoever, are going

 13 to be using the products and services that I'm

 14 marketing. When I worked in the bank business, I went

 15 out to 120 branches all over the United States, and I

 16 went into those branches and I pretended not to speak

 17 any English, and I saw how I got treated, and I saw if

 18 they had bilingual employees, and it wasn't enough that

 19 they had a Spanish language brochure that had literally

 20 been translated but didn't make sense.

 21 I had people telling me, You need to come back

 22 on Tuesday and Thursdays when we have so and so who is

 23 bilingual and then somebody will be able to take care of

 24 you. That's not just cutting it if you're going to be

 25 calling yourself a diverse employer.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 135

 1 The other mistake I see a lot of companies do

 2 is, yes, you're going to outreach to the Hispanic

 3 communities so we're going to do an advertising

 4 community. Great, but can you handle the fulfillment?

 5 Do you have employees within the company that are

 6 bilingual and everybody is talking about the sensitivity

 7 issue.

 8 And I have I call -- you need to have bilingual

 9 but you also need to have bicultural, and that's the

 10 nuances of the culture sensitivities that many of these

 11 services that we're trying to market need.

 12 The other thing is it's not enough to just use

 13 the community, and I use that word literally, use the

 14 community for the services and goods that we purchase or

 15 that we use, but you also want to do business with that

 16 community as well, so if you have a marketing campaign

 17 and you're asking them to buy your product, then you

 18 better be just as diligent in trying to use them as your

 19 vendors and choose them for procurement opportunities

 20 within your business.

 21 So there needs to be a fully integrated outreach

 22 effort to that community in order to show that you truly

 23 are making the sincere effort and that you truly do want

 24 them as the consumer. It has to be a fully integrated

 25 effort, all the way to HR to procurement opportunities

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 136

 1 for that Hispanic community, and I've seen a lot of

 2 companies who just do advertising and think that's it.

 3 I'm going to do a really good job.

 4 And communities, especially community based

 5 organizations, become much more sophisticated, that

 6 might have worked ten years ago, it doesn't work anymore

 7 because they know that it's just a half felt effort and

 8 it's just we want your business but that's all went, and

 9 in order to be successful today, you need to have a

 10 fully integrated effort.

 11 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Any other panelists want to

 12 comment on this?

 13 MR. ORFILA: Yes. I would ask first one

 14 question: Do we really want to get in touch with this

 15 audience because as everybody said before if it's like

 16 if you want to, be prepared because if not, you're

 17 losing the people that call you. You're losing the

 18 people that got in touch with you and they're not coming

 19 back. That's my first question.

 20 If you really want to, you have to be prepared.

 21 You have to have the staffing, you have to have the 1

 22 800 working. You have to have all that staff working.

 23 The second thing is once again we discuss in the

 24 first panel about the diversity of our community, and a

 25 lot of the help that for instance the federal government

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 137

 1 have is not for undocumented immigrants, so if you want

 2 to reach the immigrants that are legally here, you

 3 should say up front because if not you'll have a lot of

 4 undocumented immigrants calling you, hoping that they

 5 could buy a house with you, hoping that they can do

 6 this, do that, and they cannot.

 7 And once again, once they hear and, no, they

 8 will not come back. Let's see three years from now if

 9 everything changed, so I would go for -- we were talking

 10 before the audience, Go for your community, talk with

 11 your community because another thing was the previous

 12 forum, there was the case about Ford trying to improve

 13 their marketing campaign, and they were trying to figure

 14 it out, but they didn't talk to Hispanics.

 15 It was like, Okay, you want to reach us, talk to

 16 me. It happened to me also in some companies that I

 17 worked, that it's like the head of the company, it's

 18 American, it's I don't know, whatever you want, and they

 19 tried to reach the Hispanic community by their

 20 standards, my boss's standard, and it was like, huh-uh,

 21 it's not going to work, so first get in touch and

 22 remember, from the millions of Hispanics that we have

 23 here, we assume we have 11 million, undocumented

 24 approximately -- between 7 and 11. Nobody knows for

 25 sure.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 138

 1 So you have to know that if you're going for the

 2 Hispanics that are legally here. You have to tell them

 3 that upfront because, for instance, 40 percent of the

 4 small businesses created in the U.S. are Latinos, are

 5 women, but if you go for the SBA or you go for the --

 6 that is the SBA web page, they cannot get any funding.

 7 They cannot get any help because probably they are

 8 undocumented.

 9 So be truthful because one thing that comes out

 10 of this panel and the other panel is that we trust a

 11 lot, the Hispanics trust a lot. That's why we get into

 12 so much trouble. We trust this guy that tries to sell

 13 me the prepaid card. We trust the other one. We trust

 14 this guy that's talking about money. Who is this guy

 15 talking about money? So we trust a lot, and if you

 16 misuse this trust, that trust, that's going to be really

 17 bad for you.

 18 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Anna.

 19 MS. MONTES: I think the other thing is what's

 20 very effective is to train community leaders to do

 21 events in the neighborhood in the communities where

 22 people live like in San Francisco, the mission district

 23 or Bayview Hunters Point or different parts of the city

 24 or go into the communities.

 25 One of the things that doesn't work, we have

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 139

 1 hearings in California where people can decide on their

 2 fate as telecommunication consumers on whether or not to

 3 raise rates, and they don't go because the meetings are

 4 held at the commission. The word doesn't get out

 5 anyway. They either do poor outreach or anyway.

 6 The thing is you need to go into the communities

 7 and do the training if you really want to train

 8 community leaders, and the other thing is really you

 9 have to make sure it's not just executive directors

 10 going from community based organizations. You need to

 11 have enough room for them to bring staff because a lot

 12 of times what ends up happening is community leaders

 13 gets identified as the executive director of this very

 14 large organization.

 15 Well, community leaders are people that are

 16 involved in community activities, so a training for

 17 community leaders includes community based

 18 organizations, but it also includes parents that are

 19 real involved. It includes just different individuals

 20 that are civically engaged on many different levels and

 21 you put the word out, and you don't do it just from your

 22 agency.

 23 We do a lot of partnerships. We partner with

 24 several, state, city, corporations, grass root

 25 organizations, but if you really want to get the word

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 140

 1 out about something that you're doing, it really has to

 2 be a partnership because the mailing list or the people

 3 that you partner with are going to be the once that

 4 bring in the people you want to talk to.

 5 For example, we would partner with several

 6 different groups, get the mailing list together and then

 7 invite the people to come out to some kind of training.

 8 You also need to talk to people beforehand and identify

 9 their issues because what you think is really important

 10 might not be what's happening in that community.

 11 So identity theft is very important, but maybe

 12 people are having more problems with phone cards than

 13 they are with identity theft. That doesn't mean you

 14 can't tie that in. You can, but you really need to do

 15 that.

 16 The other thing is -- that's it. Those are my

 17 comments.

 18 MS. RODRIGUEZ: I'm going to open it up for

 19 questions, but before I do that, I'm going to do

 20 something dangerous with a group of Latinos, which is

 21 I'm going to ask you if you would like to -- in a sound

 22 bite, so ten words or less, is there something that you

 23 really want to make sure that the folks here take away

 24 with them before we get into questions, so your sound

 25 bite for the day, whoever wants to go first.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 141

 1 MR. BARD: Well, I think we've all stated over

 2 and over again whether it's the media, whether it's

 3 community organizations, invest your time in

 4 relationships.

 5 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Judy?

 6 MS. CHAPA: Oh, my God. I can't say anything in

 7 less than ten words. Well, relationships are very

 8 important and financial education is the key to

 9 empowerment in terms of informed consumers, the best

 10 consumer you can be.

 11 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Anna?

 12 MS. MONTES: Be consistent, follow up, be

 13 strategic in your planning and keep it simple.

 14 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Fernando.

 15 MR. ORFILA: That's it basically. Going back,

 16 know your audience, your community, whatever you want to

 17 reach. Know them by heart. That's really important.

 18 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Teresa?

 19 MS. SANTIAGO: Grass roots, be able to go into

 20 that community. Be bilingual, have people that look

 21 like you going into that community and with media

 22 partners, make sure that you're giving them the

 23 information testimonials from people that have been

 24 scammed and give the information in Spanish. Give them

 25 everything that you can to have that media

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 142

 1 relationship.

 2 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Great, thank you. That was

 3 pretty good, ten words or less.

 4 We will open it now for questions, and there are

 5 folks with microphones, and if you were here earlier, it

 6 looked like the microphones weren't working, but I

 7 understand they are working. You just have to put your

 8 mouth really close to the mike.

 9 Please also when you start say your name and

 10 spell it, please, for the recording. Questions?

 11 MS. GOODSON: Hello, my name is hello my name is

 12 Janie Goodson, J A N I E, G O O D S O N. I'm with the

 13 Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit policy and

 14 resource organization. One of our focuses is predatory

 15 mortgage lending, and I have read that in several Latin

 16 American countries, you have to have a substantial down

 17 payment to buy a home, like 50 percent or more.

 18 And the theory in the article I was reading was

 19 that this prevents, this may prevent many Latinos from

 20 trying to become homeowners.

 21 One question I had is whether it may make

 22 Latinos more prone to accept loans on bad terms because

 23 they're excited to get credit like if somebody will give

 24 you a loan, you'll take it, and I'm wondering if anyone

 25 can speak to either that issue or other kind of national

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 143

 1 economic differences that affect how people view issues

 2 in the U.S. economy?

 3 MR. BARD: You know predator lending is really a

 4 major problem in our community, and it is so much so

 5 that the major lenders like Citibank and the other

 6 mortgage companies have their own programs to address

 7 those in play.

 8 Because like the panel mentioned, we're so much

 9 of a cash economy. It makes us not only victims to

 10 predatory lending, it makes us victims of crime because

 11 if you know you have a stash of cash in the house,

 12 believe me there are people who want to come in there

 13 and take it.

 14 We produce across the country with a Magazine, a

 15 program we called the Latino Style business series, and

 16 they issue of finance is always a major issue, access to

 17 capital, and even with people that are established, you

 18 were mentioning how the business owners start the

 19 business. There are more Latinos that start their

 20 business, for instance, with their credit cards, with

 21 the family savings, from second mortgages.

 22 So we're very susceptible, but any major bank

 23 that you can tall about, and I'm sure Judy can talk to

 24 this, has their eye on predator lending in their

 25 markets.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 144

 1 MS. CHAPA: That's true, and actually when

 2 Robert mentioned about the large amounts of cash, I have

 3 literally, and I was stunned, I've never seen so much

 4 money in my life. I was in a bank in Denver, Colorado,

 5 and this elderly couple, immigrant Mexicans, came in and

 6 they had $10,000 in cash in brown paper bags. I kid you

 7 not. And they had been saving it, saving and saving,

 8 and they were coming into start the process to buy a

 9 home, and so you're absolutely right.

 10 That is one of the big issues in terms of not

 11 only predatory lending but crime, and predatory lending

 12 is one of the reasons why financial education among the

 13 financial institutions is so important because we're

 14 trying to steer consumers away from these types of

 15 practices and trying to educate them so that they know

 16 what to stay away from and to know not to go to those

 17 types of services and go to a financial institution that

 18 is not going to rip them off.

 19 MS. MONTES: In the Latino company -- well in

 20 the Latino community it is not so much stocks and bonds

 21 and credit cards. It's owning a home so that's critical

 22 within -- because Latinos, that's the sign of the

 23 American dream, and that's a sign of wealth.

 24 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Questions over here?

 25 MS. PANLENER: I just wanted to add -- .

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 145

 1 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Please say your name and spell

 2 it.

 3 MS. PANLENER: Juanita, P A N L E N E R, and I

 4 work at Bangor Communications, and I just wanted to add

 5 that a couple years ago I did a number of focus groups

 6 about Latino's perception of the banking system, what

 7 they know about, yeah, the financial system in the

 8 United States, and one of the things that it just sort

 9 of -- this conversation is reminding me of is a lot of

 10 the predatory institutions, they communicate to Latinos

 11 in their own language.

 12 You might be able to speak to them in Spanish,

 13 so they seem trustworthy, and so if we're already

 14 trustworthy and hey, they're talking to us in English

 15 but this bank over here that's actually legitimate isn't

 16 speaking to us in our language, then wait, what, we need

 17 a social security number too, no, so then, yeah, it just

 18 makes it more competitive for us.

 19 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Back there.

 20 MR. ELKINS: Hershall Elkins, E L K I N S, state

 21 of California Attorney General's office. Our office, we

 22 have 35 million people in California, and of course we

 23 have the largest Hispanic population, and there are with

 24 our agency and other agencies close to a million

 25 complaints that come in a year. There are a million

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 146

 1 people who are licensed.

 2 So there are two issues. Number 1 is getting

 3 information out in which we don't want the claims. You

 4 want to get information. For example in one of the

 5 actions that we brought against a predatory lender that

 6 only had -- was using rates for sub prime, 70 percent of

 7 their customers were prime. They didn't know it. They

 8 didn't recognize it.

 9 So that information we would like to get out,

 10 not because we want to get the complaint but we want to

 11 get to the education. The second thing we want to get

 12 is complaints, so that we can bring actions against the

 13 company. We're not that good on individual complaints

 14 solving it.

 15 We tried to do this in a way obviously, but

 16 we're not that successful because there are too many

 17 people, so the issue is how do we get those two messages

 18 out to the media or elsewhere? If we want general

 19 information we just want to get out -- but we don't --

 20 you're talking about getting claims coming in.

 21 I've done that before, and I recognize thousands

 22 of complaints that have come in following and, number 2,

 23 to get the information so that we can bring the

 24 actions. That is the trusting is we'll bring the

 25 actions against these companies, but we won't

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 147

 1 necessarily solve your particular problem.

 2 How do we do that?

 3 MS. MONTES: I'll speak to what we do in our

 4 project. What we do is our agencies do two things.

 5 They do education and they also take complaints. We

 6 have on our web electronic database. It's a statewide

 7 database, and they've all been trained to do intake so

 8 when a person comes into the office, they're asked to

 9 bring in documents. All of the information is entered

 10 into the database.

 11 We're working with the California Public

 12 Utilities Commission to follow up on complaints. We

 13 want to work with the district attorneys office to

 14 follow up on complaints, and we will be at some point

 15 generating reports on a regular basis, but we are doing

 16 that by the partners that we have with the different

 17 agencies that we are building in California and also

 18 with other legal services and pro bono attorneys and the

 19 community based organizations.

 20 So that's how we're collecting complaints and

 21 following up on complaints.

 22 MR. ORFILA: From the T.V. Point of view for

 23 instance it's going to be difficult to divide the two

 24 things. If you are going to put a message out, there is

 25 90 percent chance that you are going to get the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 148

 1 complaints related to that because at the time of

 2 writing the piece, writing the story, I would have to

 3 end with, If you are involved in something like is, I

 4 will -- but for my piece I will need to have a 1-800

 5 number, and we need to have that.

 6 So it's going to be really difficult just to put

 7 information out without having any feedback information

 8 on that. And from the TV perspective,. The only way I

 9 would go for it, it's really with news information

 10 venous information, okay, we're going to bust this

 11 company, this agency, and this address and this address

 12 and it's going to be a really good video, that's what

 13 you have to say for TV.

 14 It's going to be a really good video, really

 15 good story because you can film this, da-da-da-da, so

 16 that would be your hook for the information.

 17 MR. ELKINS: All of that I appreciate, the hook

 18 and so forth, and the issue is we'll give the 800 number

 19 and we'll tell them how to talk to us, but it's the

 20 disappointment issue in the fact that we'll be contacted

 21 and we'll accept complaints from everybody but what we

 22 really do is try to solve the problem overall, and how

 23 do you avoid disappointment by the individuals we may

 24 not be able to solve their particular problem or get

 25 their money back.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 149

 1 MR. ORFILA: In that case I would explain it

 2 once you are-- you've been interviewed or somebody from

 3 the agency is going to interview, your SOT you should

 4 talk to those people and say I need to talk to this. So

 5 before the-- off camera. You could say, You know what,

 6 you can ask me whatever you want but I need my SOT, but

 7 I need to be-- but we cannot solve every single case.

 8 You could say it and you could talk with a reporter and

 9 then you can -- he would be in charge of mixing it with

 10 the information.

 11 But also on your end you could -- since you

 12 cannot solve those particular cases, perhaps you could

 13 have a list of people that could help these people,

 14 other communities.

 15 MS. CHAPA: Have a list of referrals that might

 16 be able to if you can't. That's what I always do. If

 17 I'm not the end solution, I at least try to offer them

 18 an alternative of people who may be able to help him.

 19 MS. MONTES: We refer out, yeah. If we have

 20 particular issues. We educate them on the issues to try

 21 to help them understand why they can't help them, try to

 22 help them understand what happened and why they can't do

 23 anything, they have no resource, and then we refer them

 24 out.

 25 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Teresa?

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 150

 1 MS. SANTIAGO: I wanted to talk to the

 2 education, about that you really need people to go out

 3 to the community. You need to go and they have to speak

 4 the language and look like us.

 5 MS. ELKINS: We can't go out to the community.

 6 We have 35 million in the state of California. We don't

 7 have the staff to go out to 35 million people. It is

 8 not productive.

 9 MS. SANTIAGO: You have to start somewhere.

 10 MS. ELKINS: The productive thing, the 40 years

 11 I've been in this, the productive thing is bring the

 12 actions that will produce the results. You bring the

 13 action. You try to get.

 14 MS. SANTIAGO: If the story is that they could

 15 have gotten this loan, but not because they were

 16 trying -- they were good, they were good candidates for

 17 every loan, and they wouldn't have to go to this

 18 alternative loan system, okay, that's a story that you

 19 need to get out there into the community. That's the

 20 education piece.

 21 You need to -- you have to find a way of bring

 22 that out to the community, whether that's through the

 23 media or whether that's going door to door or doing --

 24 if you can't do it as an individual, then do a forum do

 25 a conference but get the information out to the

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 151

 1 community. That's crucial no matter how many millions

 2 of people you have you have to get it out there.

 3 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Question over here.

 4 MR. ORFILA: If you would have numbers like 70

 5 percent of the people that go forward, this type of

 6 loans, they could go for a real good loan, that would

 7 catch me as a reporter.

 8 MS. ELKINS: We have gotten restitutions this

 9 last year of over a half billion dollars in predatory

 10 lending for individuals, and I've been in this business

 11 before, many of you have been alive, and we started out

 12 going bit by bit to try to solve it, but at this stage,

 13 with the huge numbers that are around, I think in order

 14 to be effective, you have to concentrate on numbers.

 15 The idea of going out and being very nice -- a

 16 hundred people here, 50 people here, it's fine if you

 17 want to do that, but in fact to really work it you've

 18 got to do it in numbers.

 19 MR. ORFILA: I'm saying this from my

 20 perspective. As the media if you send me a press

 21 release saying 70 percent of the people that go for this

 22 type of loan could have gotten a different loan, then I

 23 could use that information because they would understand

 24 it, and they could do an educational piece. You could

 25 go for the news staff that I told you before or you can

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 152

 1 go for the educational.

 2 But the thing is there's another thing there are

 3 few business reporters in Spanish and, so you have to

 4 have translators for the audience, but you have to

 5 translate to them so you have to make it really

 6 understandable for them.

 7 Like I'm saying 7 people out of ten, they could

 8 have gotten 5.5 interest rate on 30 years but they went

 9 to this agency and they got 9.5.

 10 MS. RODRIGUEZ: I have someone right in the

 11 front here.

 12 MS. PARNES: Lidia Parnes, P A R N E S, and I'm

 13 with the Federal Trade Commission, and Hershall, I

 14 wanted to respond a little bit to what you were saying.

 15 I think from the law enforcement perspective, and at the

 16 FTC we do a lot of consumer but we also ultimately are a

 17 law enforcement agency.

 18 Of course the expectation is that you and we are

 19 going to bring cases that have an impact on the most

 20 people, but I think as part of what this is all about

 21 because I don't think anybody would suggest that your

 22 role in the Attorney General's office of the State of

 23 California is to go out to every community in California

 24 and reach out.

 25 But it certainly isn't, and we can't be in every

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 153

 1 community across the country, but what we all can do I

 2 think is to reach out to the community based

 3 organizations and the Spanish language media in our

 4 areas and give the information to them and then they in

 5 turn pass it on.

 6 MS. ELKINS: I agree. I think you're absolutely

 7 right.

 8 MS. RODRIGUEZ: We only have a few more minutes

 9 left. Are there other questions. Over here.

 10 MS. PORRICO: Basically I wanted to make a

 11 comment --

 12 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Could you state your name again,

 13 please.

 14 MS. PORRICO: Myriam Porrico, Montgomery County

 15 government. In terms of the relationships, the

 16 relationships with the media, of course I would put them

 17 in the number 1 place because they really made my job

 18 easier. They really did everything for me, but the

 19 partner has to develop into a relationship, and that

 20 relationship, it becomes a personal relationship with

 21 the reporters.

 22 With the TVs, since I couldn't really go for an

 23 ad because I didn't have any budget, really I started

 24 working with giving them really nice stories where they

 25 could come and cover to a point if you develop a

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 154

 1 personal relationship, then the reporter will actually

 2 -- this is radio and TV, they will actually call you

 3 when they don't have anything else, and they'll ask, Do

 4 you have anything interesting.

 5 But the other side is basically that yes, you

 6 have to be ready for them, because when you go on a

 7 radio show, for example, and you present a case and you

 8 have hundreds of people who have the same similar cases,

 9 then you go back to your office and you have to be ready

 10 yourself to take those calls, return those calls or you

 11 have to have the staff to do it.

 12 The other comment I want to make is in terms of

 13 the translations. We talked about two pieces the

 14 translations, one being the individual. Well, the

 15 different countries that the Latinos and Hispanics come

 16 from and that you have to address really to that

 17 community, yes, you need to have a common language

 18 that's one important piece.

 19 The other one was that being bicultural, but I

 20 would add a third piece to that and that is of you're

 21 having a document of any kind translated, make sure that

 22 the individual knows the subject because it's not the

 23 same thing.

 24 I'll use myself as an example. I work with the

 25 health care field, and in the past when I worked -- now

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 155

 1 that I'm working for housing and community, that

 2 involves consumer protection, and I was asked to do

 3 translations. At the beginning I said no, because I

 4 really don't know yet what this office really does.

 5 I was ready to make my -- do my first

 6 translation only like maybe two months after I started

 7 the job because then I really could communicate what the

 8 office wanted to communicate by knowing exactly what I

 9 was talking about.

 10 MS. CHAPA: That's very important I'm glad you

 11 said that because that's a constant battle for me.

 12 Whenever anyone has asked me in my different capacities,

 13 Well, don't we have someone that speaks Spanish, let

 14 them do it. I go, Why would you do that, would you have

 15 the janitor who speaks English write your press release

 16 in English? It's like dead silence.

 17 Just because you speak English doesn't make you

 18 a great writer, and that's the same thing because you

 19 can speak Spanish does not mean you're capable of

 20 writing a press release. Come on. So you need to keep

 21 that in mind. That's very important.

 22 MR. ORFILA: I would like to add something about

 23 the relationship media for TV or radio. It's only one

 24 word sweeps. We journalists are kind of lazy people,

 25 and in sweeps we looks that's what I'm saying, every May

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 156

 1 July, August, September, those are the months when the

 2 Nielson searches for the TV audience, and they decide

 3 what's the ratings, and that's where we prepare our best

 4 pieces.

 5 And if you call me, or if you call any reporter

 6 and you will say you know what, we have a great story

 7 about this, they will hear you very, very carefully.

 8 They will decide if it's good or not but.

 9 MS. CHAPA: You know this is being taped so.

 10 MS. RODRIGUEZ: We have time for one last

 11 question, and you are the lucky guy.

 12 MR. HERRERA: Thank you very much because I came

 13 from LA, right? My name is Pastor Herrera, H E R R E

 14 R. That's my name. It's not my title, okay. Just a

 15 couple of things. I just wanted to share with you our

 16 own experience in LA, and, Robert, you were talking

 17 about I guess it was the 241-I campaign that you were

 18 working with in LA.

 19 One of the reasons I think that's a really good

 20 model is because in addition to the children getting the

 21 information, we also went to the adult schools, and

 22 believe me, in California, there's a big network of

 23 adult schools, and I don't know if this is true in some

 24 of the other communities here in this country, but here

 25 the students are really there to learn and they absorb

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 157

 1 information that you bring them, and that was a really

 2 good way of getting the information out.

 3 Another avenue is talk radio. This has been an

 4 increasing phenomenon in the Latino community, the

 5 Spanish speaking Latino where they want people to go

 6 there and talk, and you answer questions, and believe me

 7 it's a great way to educate the information.

 8 One of my responsibilities also at the

 9 Department of Consumer Affairs is to regulate cable so

 10 I'm really tied into public access. Every community has

 11 a public access channel. That's a golden opportunity

 12 for you to get the message out also so you can get

 13 there, get your message out and people, producers,

 14 they're willing to do that.

 15 I wanted to ask a question to the panel real

 16 quickly, if you want to in ten words or less, because

 17 education appears to be very important to any community

 18 that's really having problems with consumer protection,

 19 and how do you -- do you have any advice to us to be

 20 able to have additional resources or if we don't have

 21 the resources, where can we get some resources to really

 22 do a campaign where we could hire a person to really

 23 make an effort to educate our communities?

 24 MS. CHAPA: I actually I'll go first. There are

 25 some organizations that do give grants to

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 158

 1 organizations. NEFE is one of them, and American

 2 Express Foundation gives grants and monies out to

 3 organizations that are endeavoring in education issues.

 4 And they also list others once you get to that web site.

 5 So I know there are several foundations out

 6 there that specifically give them -- no. NEFE, NEFE.ORG

 7 is the web site, and the other one, I'm sorry. I said

 8 that really fast, and the other one is the American

 9 Express Foundation. They offer money specifically for

 10 education causes to underserved communities.

 11 MR. BARD: One of the things that we used to do

 12 all the time is pretty much all the major marketers of

 13 -- the Spanish marketers let's say the car companies

 14 that has some kind of program that is focusing on a

 15 particular issue, a lot of them have to do with programs

 16 with car safety.

 17 Car safety is an issue. And in car safety it's

 18 a number of things because it could be from how to use

 19 it to. What's the real kind of car, real kind of seat

 20 that you should have, and as part of -- yeah, the child

 21 safety seats. Actually part of that campaign that was

 22 funded in a partnership, and I don't remember which auto

 23 company it was, led to the removal of a particular car

 24 seat from the market that was one of the major sellers.

 25 So if you talk to any of the major four

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 159

 1 foundations, all of these foundation all have programs

 2 they focus on and they're willing to assist you in

 3 that. At the same time, because of the nature of the

 4 business they have massive relationships with media.

 5 I mean, if Ford company calls and tells me,

 6 Listen I you to run PSA on this thing, you know what?

 7 He's going to respond. Why? Because they have a major

 8 relationships. You can find the same thing with the

 9 banks, with the insurance companies.

 10 All these companies have -- specially insurance

 11 companies have consumer fraud insurance companies that

 12 kind of probably play a major role, so the State Farms

 13 and Allstates and all of them.

 14 MS. CHAPA: They're spending a lot of money

 15 right now, the insurance companies, on Hispanic

 16 outreach.

 17 MR. BARD: They're doing base massive campaigns

 18 on financial literacy for instance. A all of them are

 19 doing this.

 20 MS. RODRIGUEZ: Obviously we could keep talking

 21 and talking about this and I'm really glad that the FTC

 22 for putting this together, and maybe you'll need to do

 23 another one, but how about a round of applause.

 24 (Applause.)

 25 MS. SHANOFF: Thank you. Thank you all. Thank

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 160

 1 you, Maria. It was just a great afternoon. I'm now

 2 really delighted to introduce Howard Beales, the

 3 Director of FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection since

 4 June 2001.

 5 Many of you may recognize Howard's voice or his

 6 face from the many interviews he's done on radio and

 7 television. Howard is an economist, and he may think

 8 his areas of expertise are advertising and other aspects

 9 of consumer protection regulations, but I think his true

 10 claim to fame is his ability to translate complex

 11 concepts into plain language.

 12 So please join me in welcoming Howard Beales.

 13 MR. BEALES: Thank you, Carolyn. Coming from

 14 you that's high praise indeed.

 15 We've come to the end of a busy and productive

 16 day, and I would especially like to thanks the panelist

 17 who volunteered their time to address the important

 18 issues of developing and promoting of outreach in the

 19 Hispanic community.

 20 I'm sure we all agree that educated consumers

 21 are our best defense against consumer fraud. If our

 22 goal is to stop consumer fraud before it happens, and I

 23 know it is, consumer outreach is critical. Consumers

 24 must know where to get useful information, who to call

 25 and where to complain.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 161

 1 As an economist I don't usually like to tell

 2 antidotes, but here's one that I think really

 3 illustrates the power of an informed consumer. A couple

 4 weeks ago we held a press conference to announce our

 5 Hispanic Law Enforcement Outreach Initiative.

 6 One of the participants was Parla Coranodo, a

 7 young woman who been a victim of a company who

 8 advertised fraudulent work at home opportunities.

 9 She described to the press how she confronted

 10 the company about their failure to honor their promises

 11 to her, telling the company that she would file a

 12 complaint with the authorities. The company laughed,

 13 told her go ahead, file a complaint, no one is going to

 14 do anything about it.

 15 Well, Parla wasn't going to be waved off like an

 16 annoying fly or I should say a cicada. She called the

 17 FTC's consumer complaint line and told one of our

 18 Spanish language agents her story, and that was one of

 19 the companies we sued that day. We got a temporary

 20 restraining order that stopped the scam. We convinced

 21 the Judge to freeze the company's assets. That's the

 22 power of an educated consumer.

 23 Here at the FTC we're committed to excellence in

 24 our outreach to Spanish speakers. We're making consumer

 25 information available in plain Spanish, not legalese.

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 162

 1 We've distributing radio public service announcements in

 2 Spanish, and we're pitching consumer news in to the

 3 Spanish language media, and we're trying to build

 4 partners with organizations, businesses and leaders in

 5 the Hispanic community, all of you who can help us get

 6 out our fraud prevention methods.

 7 We all have a role to play in preventing

 8 consumer fraud. You have my pledge that the FTC will

 9 continue to fight fraud aimed at Hispanic consumers, and

 10 I hope we can count on you to do your part too.

 11 Thank you again for attending. I hope to see

 12 you all at tomorrow's session where our panels will look

 13 at how to protect Spanish consumers from fraud.

 14 Thank you all for being here.

 15

 16

 17

 18

 19

 20

 21

 22

 23

 24

 25

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025
 163

 1 C E R T I F I C A T I O N O F R E P O R T E R

 2

 3 CASE TITLE: HISPANIC OUTREACH FORUM

 4 HEARING DATE: MAY 12, 2004

 5

 6 I HEREBY CERTIFY that the transcript contained

 7 herein is a full and accurate transcript of the tapes

 8 transcribed by me on the above cause before the FEDERAL

 9 TRADE COMMISSION to the best of my knowledge and belief.

 10

 11 DATED: MAY 21, 2004

 12

 13

 14 DEBRA L. MAHEUX

 15

 16

 17 C E R T I F I C A T I O N O F P R O O F R E A D E R

 18

 19 I HEREBY CERTIFY that I proofread the transcript

 20 for accuracy in spelling, hyphenation, punctuation and

 21 format.

 22

 23 DIANE QUADE

 24

 25

 For The Record, Inc.

 Waldorf, Maryland

 (301)870-8025