Current Topic Report Blog

For my Current Topic Report, I would like to explore Noche Latina, the NBA’s current marketing campaign that was launched to attract Latino fans to the world of professional basketball. This topic interests me for the simple reason that I am a fan of the NBA and I am of Latino descent. Over the past decade, there has been a dramatic rise of the Latino population in the U.S. and with that we have seen an increase in business strategies to market to this segment. In regards to customer insights, I would like to explore how successful this campaign has been for the NBA in attracting and keeping Latino fans and in what direction they are wanting to take their efforts. They types of questions I will be addressing are:

-How have they designed their campaign in order to make the greatest impact in attracting Latino fans?
-What type of persona have they created for this campaign?
-What are variables/factors that are affecting this persona’s decisions/behaviors?
-What is their long-term marketing strategy?
-How has behavioral economics, stereotypes and expectations affected the target market’s experiences with Noche Latina?

The ultimate goal for this report is to explore a customer insight issue. With that being said, I feel that one of the issues with this initiative is that it is only being executed among teams that are in cities with large Latino populations and not across the board. If the NBA really wants to penetrate this market they must do so on a larger scale, otherwise their efforts may not seem genuine to this segment. Another issue is that the NBA should be careful in not making the assumption that all Spanish-speakers are culturally and/or linguistically similar. For example, simply putting “El” or “Los” in front of a team name does not necessarily make them more relatable to such a mass market and it might even be considered offensive to some. This is where behavioral economics and stereotypes come into play. Going back to the point of larger-scale efforts, I feel that the Latino market is too huge to be effectively marketed to by just one night of pre-game and post-game activities, only done by teams in cities with large Latino populations. For the NBA’s campaign to be truly successful, it must be carried out all season long. An idea could be to possibly integrate Noche Latina with another one of the NBA’s well-known initiatives, NBA Cares. Doing so would allow this marketing campaign to be executed year-round and help the organization reach out to the Latino community. Making a large-scale impact on the community would go a much longer way in terms of building customer trust and loyalty as opposed to trying to build awareness of the Latino culture and language a few nights during the regular season. This would make it easier for the NBA to build brand equity, especially because studies have shown that the Latino population is overall very brand loyal.

I’m really looking forward to writing this paper not only because I am a huge basketball fan but also because I am Latina and this marketing campaign specifically relates to me. Although I have never experienced Noche Latina first-hand, I have been to a Houston Rockets game, several San Antonio Spurs games, the 2010 All-Star game in Dallas, and I’ve visited the Staples Center in L.A., all cities with large Latino populations. I’m hoping that the fact that I’m so closely tied to the topic as a customer will make for a more interesting paper in which I will be able to provide some of my own key insights and experiences.

Here are some articles that I found on the NBA’s Noche Latina initiative:

http://www.pe.com/sports/basketball/lakers/stories/PE_News_Local_N_lakers18_cp.483817d.html

http://www.nba.com/2010/news/features/art_garcia/03/05/noche.latina/index.html

Persona Lifecycles & Cohort Personas

After reading about the Personal Lifecycle, the main point that really captured my interest was how the cycle is designed to metaphorically represent the stages of human development. Even though I don’t quite remember the exact elements of each phase, I’m sure that this concept will help me during our group project. I now have a better understanding on how the persona lifecycle goes hand-in-hand with the product development cycle to help structure user-centered thinking, with the ultimate goal of designing a product based on users’ needs and goals. The Cohort Personas helped to expand my interest even further. I had a great time reading about the different personas and even found myself associating them to people that I already know. The persona that I felt I could relate to the most was Megan, described as “fit and stylish students: young, fashion-conscious, career-minded female students who enjoy music, aerobic sports and the latest in high tech.”

After analyzing both the Personal Lifecycle and the Cohort Personas, I concluded that the best way for a marketer to create an accurate and rich persona of me would be to gather research about the school that I attend, my current job, and interest and lifestyle information on Facebook and Twitter. By simply finding out that I am an Accounting major at the McCombs School of Business and that I have an internship with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he/she could easily create an “assumption persona” of me. Just by knowing these two facts the very least a marketer would be able to assume is that I am an ambitious and detail-oriented student that places an importance on practicality and job security in her career choice. In order to create a more accurate persona he/she would have to do extensive research on Facebook and Twitter in order to gather data about my interests, extracurricular activities, and overall lifestyle.

The persona I created for myself is based on things that a market researcher could easily find on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve provided descriptions that would be very helpful to marketers in identifying key insights in order to provide an optimal user experience for my persona.

Well-Rounded Female Student on a budget: Valerie

Young student and aspiring fashionista who leads an active social life, is interested in music, health & fitness, self-improvement and becoming cultured.

Demographics

Median: age 22, Median income: $10,000, single with no children, working towards first degree

Personality

Work hard, play hard is my motto.

Sorry but I actually have dinner plans tonight. How about next week?

Thanks! I got them on sale at Macy’s.

I run the Townlake trail every morning to start my day.

Great, I forgot my MacBook battery and my iPod at home. How am I going to survive?!

I can’t wait for Thanksgiving break. I’m going on vacation to Mexico City with my family.

Would you like to go to the Blanton museum after photography class? I hear they have a new exhibit.

Lifestyles

Audio/Video: Macbook, iPod, Photography, Not much time for TV

Sports/fitness: Jogging, Calisthenics, Health-conscious

Interests: Cultural/Fine Arts, Travel, Philosophy, Fashion Trends, Self-improvement, Career-oriented activities, Social issues

Extracurricular: Part-time job, Busy social agenda, Watches sports, Family-oriented

Overall I really enjoyed this exercise. I learned so much about myself by simply creating a persona and I’m especially looking forward to developing my “character.” J

Hello

my first blog.