Are Latinos Struggling With Depression?

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DISCLOSURE: This post was originally published Feb. 17th. See the original + follow up comments on the Casanova Pendrill blog.

A recent article on HuffingtonPost.com about depression in Latinos really surprised me, since the data I’ve seen generally describes Latinos as positive or optimistic. Some other findings were:

• Mental illness, such as depression, often carries a stigma in the Hispanic community because of cultural and socioeconomic factors – “Even more so than American culture as a whole, Latino culture values self-reliance, which can discourage people from talking about their problems…”
• There’s a major shortage of Spanish-speaking health professionals
• Cultural barriers –  “Many physicians, psychiatrists, therapists are well-trained…but they aren’t trained in understanding culture and how they’re impacting someone’s world.”
• 16 million Latinos – about 1 in 3,  are presently uninsured in the U.S.

Maybe marketers need to take a second look. I don’t really have any answers, but I do have a lot of questions:

How many U.S. Latinos are currently battling depression?

How does depression vary based on level of acculturation?

Does country of origin play a role?

Parents, teens, recent arrivals adjusting to life in the U.S. — how are they coping?

Is this article an accurate depiction or just a catchy headline?

Has anyone else seen data that supports or contradicts this article? I’d love to know.

Do Any Chewing Gums With Teeth Whiteners Really Work?

No.

“The way whitening works is that the bleach is in contact with your tooth and it removes stains by oxidation. Chewing gum doesn’t contact the outside of your tooth. It stimulates salivary flow, which will remove staining bacteria off of the chewing surfaces of your teeth and some food particles. If you want to brighten your smile, you need to use a whitening agent that stays on the outside of your teeth for a length of time. I recommend Crest Whitestrips.” — from Men’s Health

I’ve always been skeptical about these kinds of gum. Oh well – I’ll stick with sugar-free.

How Do You Design for Creativity – Bud Caddell

Sitting at home tonight trying to refine some ideas for No Right Brain Left Behind. Using Bud’s deck for inspiration:

Super Bowl Wrap Up

My favorite ad of the game was Chrysler’s “Imported from Detroit” spot. Everything from the narration, to the music, to Eminem as a pitchman was solid (Credit to W+K).

Even so, it seems like everyone is so in love with the ad that they’re forgetting what got the Detroit automakers into this mess in the first place:

“…the car companies discouraged diversification of the city’s economy, and city residents will tell you that the Big Three pretty much just stood by as the unemployment rate soared, the school system went sour, violence reached epidemic proportions, and city government became a piggy bank for the friends and family of city officials.” SOURCE: “Super Bowl Ad Stories: Chrysler, Eminem Break an Awkward Silence in Detroit” – Fast Company

The ad is positive and empowering, but the city has a long way to go and I’m a little skeptical how much advertising alone can influence the kinds of changes the Motor City needs. There are serious issues that need to be addressed (employment, crime, education, etc.), so let’s hope “Imported from Detroit” serves as the symbolic step the city needs to show that the close-minded automakers of yesterday are serious about bringing back innovation and craftsmanship. Real change will happen with committed reform – not just advertising.

My other favorite:

Doritos – Pug Attack

 

Building a Creative Environment

Everyone knows about Google’s 20% Time, but it wasn’t until I read this interview with Big Spaceship founder Michael Lebovitz that I found out that they had a similar policy in place:

We did a thing this summer called I.P. (intellectual property) Fridays. You take the traditional corporate summer Friday where everybody’s supposed to be allowed to leave at 2 p.m., but everybody has to work anyway so they can’t and they just feel miffed. So we get a big lunch for everybody and at 2 p.m. on Friday, we close to client work and spend from 2 to 7 working on our own internal projects. And the ideas for those come from anywhere in the company.

We have a little form with a few simple questions on our internal blog, and then a few of us vet the ideas. We want them to be simple, because we want small things that we can act on quickly. So we’ve got all this stuff out in the world that we created for ourselves, and people get excited about that.

This is exciting news, since I already knew agencies like Anomaly and BBH are devoting time to develop I.P. of their own. I’d like to see more companies — not just ad agencies, integrate this kind of approach into their business models.

LINKS:

“Hey, Rock Stars: Take Your Show Someplace Else” – NYTimes.com

3M’s 15% Program – via PSFK

Book Review: Liar’s Poker

I was already impressed with Michael Lewis after reading “Moneyball,” but “Liar’s Poker” is even better. Lewis is a masterful storyteller, and this book provides an excellent first-hand account of what it was like to be an Investment Banker on Wall Street in the 1970s and ’80s while taking us behind the scenes of the events leading up to Black Monday.

I. Some choice quotes

“I have this theory,” says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache securities. “Wall Street makes its best producers into managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that producing gave them. They usually aren’t well-suited to be managers. Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most ruthless of the bunch. That’s why there are cycles on Wall Street — why Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now — because the ruthless people are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure.” — pg.141

“No one ever cried on the trading floor. No one ever showed weakness or vulnerability or need for human kindness. Early on Alexander taught me the importance of a strong exterior. “I learned a while ago that there was no point to showing weakness,” he said. “When you arrive at six-thirty A.M., having had no sleep the night before, and having lost your best friend in a car accident and some Big Swinging Dick walks over to your desk, slaps you on the back, and says, ‘How the hell are you?’ you don’t say, ‘I’m really tired and really upset.’ You say, ‘I’m great, how the hell are you?’ ” pg.237

II. Key Takeaways

This book reminded me that when reading non-fiction, you don’t need to spend too much time focusing on the finer details. There are many parts of “Liar’s Poker” that get into the minutiae of economics and finance. Some of it I understood, while other parts were over my head.

That’s OK.

The most important thing, to me, is understanding the key themes and points. How did these people think? What were their motivations? How did their involvement in Wall Street during this time period foreshadow the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and worldwide?

“Liar’s Poker” is about a lot of things: greed, ego, money, corruption, extravagance, management, opportunism, etc. These themes overlap throughout the book. As I read, I couldn’t help but think of the many ways it paralleled my experience in the mortgage industry just a few years ago.

“Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but only a few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.” — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

III. Should You Read It?

Absolutely. Liar’s Poker is excellent: Lewis is an incredible writer and it will help you understand 1) what goes on behind closed doors on Wall Street and 2) how the U.S. got into it’s current economic mess.

Buy it on Amazon.com Liar’s Poker

Ouigi Theodore on Fashion + Racial Identity

Choice quote from up-and-coming fashion designer Ouigi Theodore a.k.a. “The Bearded Man”:

“Urban always had a style to it, a swagger,” Mr. Theodore said. But it came with baggage, too — “overuse of the ‘N’ word, the pants sagging,” he said. “It just created this stigma. When I travel overseas, people see the way we dress and say: ‘You guys don’t listen to hip-hop. You’re not urban.’ Yes, we are.”

Further reading:

Ouigi Theodore’s New Image for Urban America – The New York Times

The Advertising Formula

Advertising has gotten so formulaic that it’s easy to make fun of it – just look at the examples I’ve gathered over the last few weeks. Let’s hope for bigger and better things in 2011.

1. An Open Letter to All of Advertising and Marketing

2. Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising

Pink Ponies: A Case Study

Truth in Advertising

Case Study #241: The Sistine Chapel

Business Guys on Business Trips on Tumblr

ClickOnero, the Latin American Groupon

DISCLOSURE: This was originally posted Feb. 1st, 2011 on the Casanova Pendrill blog.

Groupon, the group discount coupon website, was one of the biggest web stories of 2010, and it’s no surprise that a flurry of imitators have popped up (even Google is throwing their hat in the ring after failing to acquire Groupon for $6B).

A recent example that caught my eye is ClickOnero, a Latin American version of the Groupon business model that has sites in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia; it will most likely be a huge success.

Daily deal sites like ClickOnero can offer great deals for online shoppers, but what about the businesses on the other end of the transaction? While these sites are doing a very good job of creating publicity and attracting new customers, what about long-term implications, specifically, teaching your customers to buy your products/services at deep discounts?

When you can get a $30 meal for $15, how likely are you ever going to be to pay full price? Cheaper isn’t necessarily better.

Share your thoughts in the comments!

LINK:

“Meet The Fastest Growing Company Ever” – Forbes

PSFK – “Future of Mobile Tagging” Report

DISCLOSURE: This was originally posted Jan. 24th, 2011 on the Casanova Pendrill blog.

PSFK recently released their “Future of Mobile Tagging” Report.

What’s Mobile Tagging?

“Mobile tags offer a unique opportunity for brands and their agencies to interact with potential and existing customers. These two dimensional barcodes can be applied to almost any surface and the information contained within them can be leveraged to create incentives and drivers that lead consumers along the purchase path. By bridging the online-offline divide with a click of a mobile phone button, mobile tags can drive a brand or product’s awareness.”

Confused?

Here’s a real-life example of how mobile tagging can be done:

It can be attached to virtually any product you can think of: a wine bottle, a pair of jeans, a newspaper, etc. Using your mobile phone, this code will import data into your phone and give you more information about the product.

What’s this mean for Hispanic marketers?

Study after study has shown the increasing number of Latinos using cell phones. A recent report from Terra said that 40% of Latinos currently use mobile phones to get coupons/special offers online. Mobile tagging lets brands provide non-intrusive data that can help influence purchase decisions and it ends up being win-win for both parties

Access the full report on SlideShare: