Well, they did and I did. I ran to the train with recent purchase in hand, my mouth watering at the anticipation of the wonderful flavor and luscious mouth feel of Ciao Bella dulce de leche gelato. I’m a big fan of gelato and dulce de leche and of this brand in particular.

Sadly, when I started wolfing down (did I mention I was hungry?) the gelato, I was unpleasantly surprised by the quality of the product. It wasn’t sweet. Its texture was more grainy than velvety. It just wasn’t very good. I was quite disappointed because I had never had a bad experience with this brand before. So I decided to whine about it.

I took out my phone and tweeted:

albertoferrer Usually lovely Ciao Bella dulce de leche flavor gelato today not so much. Bland, a little rancid, even some ice cristals. Sigh.
8:39 PM Feb 4th from txt

About an hour later, a fellow fan of the Ciao Bella brand tweeted:

mindytweets @albertoferrer ohhh, fail!! Try the blackberry cabernet flavor, yum!
9:41 PM Feb 4th f rom UberTwitter in reply to albertoferrer

I got home and thought nothing more about the incident. That was until I had some free time the following week and checked my Twitter feed more closely. There I found this tweet, from the Ciao Bella folks:

CiaoBellaGelato @albertoferrer Oh NO! Sounds like a remelt issue. Please call our office or email info@ciaobellagelato.com and we will handle it. sorry
2:58 pm Feb 5th from TweetDeck in reply to albertoferrer

I was floored. These guys had not only picked up my tweet, but they had tentatively diagnosed the issue and responded with (1) a promise to make it right and (2) contact information. And that was done in less than one working day. I was also thrilled.

Following their instructions, I emailed the company, explaining the situation with the tweets above pasted into the body of the email. This was on a Wednesday afternoon. The next day I received an email reply from Justine DeRose at Ciao Bella.

She apologized for the incident, which clearly was not their fault (it was the retailer’s), explained in more detail what might have been the cause of the issue, and asked for the code at the bottom of the package so they could better look into the matter. She also offered a coupon for a free pint.

The explanation was great, as it directed any questions I might have about the product away from the product itself. Asking for the code on the package also was great because it suggested that they’d really look into the matter (“these people are serious about the quality of their gelato!” I thought). And of course the free pint coupon was just icing on the proverbial cake: unexpected and delightful.

I replied to the email saying that I no longer had the packaging but letting her know where I had made my purchase. She then asked for my address and mailed me the coupon. I received the free pint coupon this weekend.

Since this situation transpired, I have visited the Ciao Bella website several times (that’s where I was able to put a face to the name of the person at Ciao Bella who was actively engaged in resolving the issue), I have looked for stores that carry their product beyond the stores I usually frequent, and I even tried to buy a pint online. I’ve told the story to several people I know and they’re all impressed with how quickly Ciao Bella handled it, how positive the experience was, and how big an advocate for their brand I’ve become. And now I’ve written this post and will tweet about it.

Was that customer service? Was that marketing? That’s for another post. But from the perspective of a consumer, it doesn’t matter. It was done very well and it will pay off for Ciao Bella. Kudos to them and special thanks to Justine.

Update:
Within an hour of my tweeting the link to this post, Ciao Bella re-tweeted it with a thank you and responded here with a comment by Deborah Holt, their VP of Marketing.

As I read that while sitting on a local train (I had missed the express train by a few minutes, much to my chagrin), it struck me as clever copy and even placement (I think that Conill handles their creative while MV42 does their media). The creative ties in nicely to the placement and to the product benefit (although the more strict grammarians among us would have requested the copy read “ir en el expreso” as the correct way to phrase it). It works nicely, in any language. Here’s a bad picture of the ad.

Continental Airlines Hispanic OOH

What was more interesting to me, however, was the tagline. I had never read the Continental Airlines tagline in Spanish before. It’s “Trabajar con Empeño. Viajar con Pasión.” The English-language tagline for Continental is “Work Hard. Fly Right.” which supposedly came from their CEO during an speech to employees and it was adopted as the tagline for the company.

In English, the tagline never said much to me. It felt obvious that it was a non-consumer statement being slapped on ads. I don’t feel it communicates much to a consumer. However, in Spanish, the adaptation of the tagline works much better. It loosely translates to “(To) Work with Determination. (To) Fly with Passion.” First of all, the choice of words really resonates with me and I think with consumers in general.

The word “empeño” is particularly interesting here. It’s a great word in Spanish and it means so much. It encapsulates the concept of striving, working hard, determination, insistence, and making an effort. To me that is a much richer concept than plain “work hard.” Then there’s the word “pasión” that is so relevant to Hispanics, but also so much more human, warm, and emotional for consumers in general that the English-language “fly right” (what does that mean, anyway?), at least in my opinion.

So, kudos to Continental Airlines. If I was your target, you got me. And by the way, how about working on that English-language tagline a bit?

As I was getting closer to the office, I spotted another example of Hispanic-targeted OOH. This one was a Bud Light billboard for its Bud Light Lime flavor. What was interesting about it is that Lime was adapted to “limón” in Spanish. It’s not that “limón” is incorrect. Au contraire, it shows  deep undersanding of the target consumer.

In the countries from where most US Hispanics hail, the small green citrus fruit is called “limón” and the larger more-elongated yellow citrus fruit is called “lima.” Go figure. Still, kudos to Bud Light for picking up on that.

Even before the US economy took its swan dive into the commode, corporate sites targeting Hispanics were few and far between. Never mind the research supporting the need for companies to have Hispanic market sites up and running, even with full transactional capabilities. Never mind the research finding that Hispanics are going online in droves and finding precious little content tailored to them. Many clients still resisted and remained general market, English-only, on the Web. This was the case even for marketers with support for Hispanic advertising. Imagine that, investing in advertising to the Hispanic market, while alienating the same consumers online.

Today’s economic realities make things even tougher. As marketing budgets get cut left and right (enough has been written about the folly of cutting marketing investment in recessionary times, so I won’t go into it here), multicultural marketing budgets commonly find themselves in the crosshairs of short-term-thinking clients. Keeping the Hispanic website becomes a line item that is often too easy to cut as companies reduce headcount in internal support staff (who’ll manage the Hispanic site now?) and overall marketing communications targeting this population (would they prioritize the website over running a few more television spots?).

Especially in these tough times, clients need to reconsider any thought of cutting the support for their Hispanic-targeted corporate website. Here are a few reasons why, some of which I alluded to above:

1. Hispanics are online. According to comScore, there were 20 million Hispanics online last month. Brands should be there too. Marketers should not alienate Hispanic consumers on the Web by providing only a general market site.
2. Hispanics who are online tend to be better-educated and have higher incomes and better credit, making the Web a bit of a filter for the cream of the crop of Hispanic consumers. Talk about efficiency!
3. There is a dearth of Hispanic-targeted content online, making any marketer’s content stand out much more than in the general market, where there’s plenty of me-too content to go around.
4. Hispanic consumers often go online to learn about the products and services they seek, even if they end up completing the transaction in offline channels. Lacking a website, where will these consumers go to get the information they need to make a purchase decision?
5. Analyzing server logs from their Hispanic-targeted sites can provide companies valuable insights into consumer behavior. Product preference, information needs, purchase behavior, and more can be gleaned from “watching” consumers on the site.
6. Marketers who cut their Hispanic sites may find their Hispanic consumers more easily swayed by the competition, which by maintaining a robust online presence for Hispanics, sent the clear message that the group is important to them.

In summary, I would strongly advise clients to not only forget about cutting Hispanic-targeted websites, but to increase the support (e.g., funding, resources) behind them. It’s an investment that will pay off handsomely in more business from this very attractive population.

• 30% of Hispanic adults with cell phones use mobile data services versus 21% for the general market (143 index).
• Messaging is most popular. 82% of Hispanic mobile data users use messaging services (IM, SMS, MMS) versus 71% for the general market (116 index).
• Ringtones are popular too. 42% of Hispanic mobile data users download ringtones versus 40% for the general market (105 index).
• Music shows a huge difference. 30% of Hispanic mobile data users download or stream music on their phones versus 13% for the general market (230 index). For Spanish-dominants, the number climbs to 35%.

Sprint Mobile Phone

Every category measured showed earlier adoption by Hispanic consumers. Only the “play games” category was tied (at 42% for both Hispanic and general market mobile data users).

This suggests that mobile marketing is continuing to grow in importance, and as with the Internet, it’s doing so disproportionately in the Hispanic market.

Now let’s be realistic. The percentages are great, but still only 4.7 million Hispanics use mobile data services versus 26.8 million general market consumers (Forrester’s base was 27 million Hispanic adults). That’s still a pretty small user base, all things considered. Still, for some categories like cell phones (duh) and others, these might be the right consumers.

The IAB

The current and updated Ad Unit Guidelines can be found here. The site will include information on how the industry can provide feedback on these new sizes.

The Guidelines suggest various units that are being voluntarily introduced or offered by publishers. Agencies should consult publishers to understand their full creative specifications. Also note that the IAB Ad Sizes Working Group will be analyzing data in the soon-to-be launched Creative Spec Database to recommend file weights for each of those units.