Latino Political Interactive Advertising

Irene Audet and Miguel Orozco are political novices. Yet, their respective online ventures represent the most innovative Latino political marketing efforts in the current election cycle.

Audet is a former schoolteacher who launched MyGrito.com as a website where her six sisters, seven brothers and all of their children could go online to chat, share pictures and upload videos. It was literally a family affair that Audet opened up to the public in March.

By June, she launched a section on her website dedicated to politics and called it Tu Grito 2008. Traffic soared.

That month there were more than 154,000 unique visitors and 2.8 million page views. In July, those numbers were up to 160,000 visitors and over three million page views with the average user staying 15 minutes.

The premise is simple - participants ask questions and the representatives of six presidential candidates (Democrats Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and the Libertarian George Phillies) provide answers.

Netroots efforts are obviously not new, but this is the first time Latino internet users have been targeted as political participants in a mix of English and Spanish.

Audet says she got started because she felt there was no website addressing Latino political viewpoints “and it is in our hands to elect this new president. It is literally in Latino hands.”

Despite the heavy traffic, Audet has been unable to persuade any of the Republican candidates to join the platform. She stresses TuGrito’s role as a nonpartisan platform.

Miguel Orozco, though, is unabashedly partisan. He is providing Senator Obama’s campaign with free marketing at the website AmigosDeObama.com and more importantly through a downloadable and infectious infectious reggaeton tune with the catchy chorus “Como Se Dice/Como Se llama? (OBAMA,OBAMA).” (How do you say it?/What’s his name? Obama, Obama).

Orozco penned the lyrics, hired the musicians and leased a studio to record the song. The educational film producer and president of Nueva Vista Media won’t say how much he spent promoting Obama’s candidacy.

Asked why he forked over money out of his own pocket, he said, “I really didn’t see media campaigns directed at Latinos. I really felt a void.”

The void being the absence of online political marketing designed to reach young and not-quite-so-young Latino voters online in both English and Spanish. Much of the Latino media buy will, of course, be concentrated in Spanish-language television. But MyGrito.com and AmigosDeObama.com demonstrate the internet is also fertile hunting ground for Hispanic votes.

Tags: Interactive Political Advertising, Latino voters