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The Situation:
In Tucson, the Hispanic community represents over 35% of Cox's total customers. This Hispanic market has a much lower penetration of Cox's products than the non-Latino market segments. The Cox Tucson team's 2002 goal was to make Cox products relevant to Hispanic customers, and they started by asking a few questions:

• What is important to this community?
• How is this community different from other segments of the market?
• What does this community want from Cox?
• How should we communicate with this market?

Upon analyzing these questions, it became clear that in order to increase the number of Hispanic customers, Cox needed to make its products more relevant to them. Further analysis also showed that no one method of communicating this new, relevant message to consumers would be successful alone. Instead, the team needed to develop and execute an integrated effort that focused on product, marketing strategy, community presence and employee focus to turn the tide and get the Hispanic community excited about Cox products.

The Solution:
Cox began by forming a partnership with a local Hispanic marketing firm, REA Communications. Together they created a blueprint that defined the target demographic and the message to the Latino segment. The target: females, 18-54 years of age, Spanish speaking and bilingual residents of Pima County. The message: Cox Communications is committed to the Hispanic customer (by offering programming in Spanish), we have a diverse staff/bilingual customer care representatives and the Latino community is an integral part of our commitment.

Cox then created new marketing efforts in Spanish, including radio, print, direct mail and television. As noted in a recent study prepared by C&S Research, Latinos spend close to nine hours listening to radio per week. Thus, radio played a prominent role in the media plan. To highlight Cox's commitment to the Latino community, the Tucson team also created a new tagline for use in the radio jingles: TeleLatina de Cox.....la television de los Latinos (translation: TeleLatina offered by Cox . . . the television for Latinos). That jingle is being used to market the TeleLatina product and airs heavily on four local Spanish radio stations, where it has earned praise for its ethnic sound. In addition, the creative Cox uses to advertise in the local TV guide, TV y Mas, is also created with the end user in mind, and each month a new ad is created with a relevant message in Spanish.

Other tactics the team used to reach this market included a coupon offer in partnership with Food City, a grocery chain, and a direct mail piece featuring baseball in partnership with TBN.

Cox also took a grassroots approach to becoming part of the Latino community, forming partnerships with local groups and maintaining a presence at local fiestas. These events allowed Cox to show how its products are relevant to Latino consumers and to educate the community about the networks on Cox TeleLatina by distributing programming information. Cox also partnered with several Latino groups, including the Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (THCC), sponsoring the THCC's monthly membership luncheons and annual golf tournament.

Finally, Cox formed internal partnerships with employees of Latino heritage by creating a TeleLatina Team to enhance and support the Latino-focused marketing and public relations efforts. The team consists of customer service representatives who assist Spanish speaking customers. By educating the reps about the Latino segment, why the segment is vital to Cox's overall success and the importance of their role in providing excellent customer service to Spanish-speaking customers, Cox ensured that Latino customers would receive not only the products but also the level of service they expect.

The Results:
By making the Hispanic consumer a priority, Cox is ensuring a long-lasting relationship with a loyal and profitable market niche. Thanks to this integrated marketing and public relations plan, strong presence in the community and higher level of support for the Hispanic customer, Cox greatly expanded its reach into Tucson's Latino community, adding a significant number of new customers while also raising the level of awareness about Cox and building a platform for a continued evolution of this relationship that will continue to create value in years to come.