LATINO ADVERTISING PIONEER, VICTOR ORNELAS, ALLIES WITH MATADOR MARKETING GROUP

Mentor and Former Intern Reunite “to Fill Strategic Void” in Latino Marketing 

FORT WORTH, TEX. (MArch 2, 2009) — Victor Ornelas, founder of Ornelas & Associates and a pioneer in Hispanic advertising, has joined forces with Matador Marketing Group, a Latino marketing and advertising firm located in Fort Worth, Texas, it was announced today by Luis Caballero, president of Matador.  The alliance reunites Ornelas and Caballero 18 years after Caballero launched his career as an intern at the renowned Dallas agency.

“We have recruited one of the industry’s champion matadors,” said Caballero. “Victor is a mentor, coach, sage and dynamo for our firm as we seek to engage national clients interested in tapping the fast-growing Latino marketplace in a more meaningful and profitable way.”

Ornelas – whose agency, Ornelas & Associates, was once called “one of the fastest-growing Hispanic advertising agencies in the country” by The New York Times – was honored by Hispanic Business magazine as National Entrepreneur of the Year in 1994. His experience includes Latino advertising campaigns for high-profile national accounts such as Anheuser-Busch Inc., Bank One Corporation, Borden, Southland Corporation/7-11 Stores, Wrangler Jeans, Pepsi, Nissan, Mobile and GTE/Verizon, among others. In 2005, Ornelas took a hiatus from the advertising industry, to build and manage a chain of five high-tech golf improvement centers in California.

Ornelas also has served as the secretary/treasurer on the national board of directors for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the industry’s leading association, as well as the chairman of the AAAA’s North Texas-Oklahoma Council.

“Like my former agency, Matador is a maverick brand that is not shackled by the constraints of holding company ownership,” said Ornelas. “It’s a spirited, independent shop with the expertise, sound strategies and operating efficiencies to do what other Latino agencies can’t.”

Ornelas and Caballero bring to the table more than 50 years of marketing and advertising agency experience, as well as a unique marketing perspective derived from their combined work on both the client and agency side of the industry. Matador will leverage this experience to fill a perceived void in the marketplace and provide national clientele the added value of “Branding at the Point of Contact.”

According to Yankelovich and the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2010 nearly one person out of every six in the United States will be of Hispanic origin and Hispanic purchasing power is projected to reach $1.2 trillion or 9.2 percent of all U.S. buying power. Yet, as companies struggle to respond to the economic recession, some are cutting Latino marketing budgets, or not even funding them in the first place.”

“This is a critical strategic error,” Ornelas said. “We need to resurrect those Latino marketing budgets. We are in a position to provide extraordinary value to clients who are willing to invest those dollars into the growing Latino Market.”

“There is a gaping void in the strategies used to effectively engage Latino consumers,” said Caballero. “Typically, many brand marketers and their multicultural agencies mirror the traditional advertising campaigns and strategies. Matador employs a sharply focused philosophy that is media agnostic, culturally relevant and engaging in a personal way that a mass advertising approach, alone, cannot duplicate.”

The philosophy – branding at the point of contact – and Matador’s Brand Roots™ process offers clients a new, more efficient tool for gaining traction and fostering brand loyalty among U.S. Latinos. “A tree grows from the roots up, not from the branches down. Brand Roots engages on a social and culturally relevant level, the point of contact, to secure the brand-customer relationship,” said Caballero.

Caballero honed his insights devising and implementing multicultural and field marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 companies such as Yum! Brands, Subway, Church’s Chicken, Papa John’s Pizza and others, and directed Hispanic agencies such as Cartel Creativo and Dieste. He also worked on Hispanic accounts for Burger King and Coca-Cola while at Sosa & Associates (now Bromley Communications) in San Antonio.

“Field marketing has long been considered an ugly step sister to the more glamorous 30-second television spot or spread print ad,” said Caballero. “We believe that the marriage of field marketing-based strategies and keen cultural insights will yield better results for marketers. In my experience many initiatives that became national campaigns were created, tested and incubated in the field. By the time mass advertising was used to support the initiative we already had momentum and traction to ensure success.”

 

About Matador Marketing Group

Launched in October of 2008, Matador Marketing Group specializes in branding at the point of contact to the Hispanic community. The Fort Worth-based agency is owned and operated by Luis Caballero, a 20-year corporate-marketing and advertising-agency veteran. For more information about Matador Marketing Group visit www.thebullfight.com or call 817-546-8372.