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Hola! Kelly
Fores, Roseanne Avella-Perez and Pedro Perez of the Nuevo Punto Advertising
Group. Photo by Scott Garrity
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Connecting
the local—and
someday national—business community to the exploding Hispanic
buying market is the main point behind Nuevo Punto (New Point)
Advertising Group, founded last summer by Bradenton’s Roseanne
Avella-Perez.
Avella-Perez has assembled a team of eight Spanish-speaking professionals
with Colombian, Cuban, Puerto Rican and Venezuelan origins—copywriters,
graphic designers, translators and market analysts—for the
new full-service ad agency.
Avella-Perez cites studies by the national market research firm HispanTelligence
that show the buying power of America’s Hispanic community
has reached $700 billion and is expected to reach $1 trillion by
2010. By 2050, HispanTelligence estimates, the Hispanic population
will triple in size to 24 percent of the total U.S. population. (According
to Creative Tampa Bay, the Hispanic 25- to 34-year-old population
in the Tampa Bay area, including Sarasota and Bradenton, grew by
89.8 percent from 1990 to 2000.) Companies large and small are seeking
ways to better connect with this booming demographic.
"From what we’ve found," she says, "if you speak to
the Hispanic community in Spanish they’re more receptive than
if you speak in English. Each nationality has a different way of
thinking, their own dialects, their own likes and dislikes. We know
the culture, we know the language, we know the marketplace. So it
puts us a step above."
Avella-Perez worked for her Colombian-born father’s air-conditioning
company in New York before setting off for the Ringling School of
Art and Design, from which she graduated in 1998.
This is the ambitious young woman’s third company. The first
was a computer repair business she and husband Pedro Perez operated
out of their apartment while they were still in college. The second
is an award-winning Web site development company named Merging Point
Design, whose clients have included the Sarasota Bradenton International
Airport, Ringing Museum, Lee Wetherington Homes and several hotels
and casinos across the U.S.
"I want to use my business experience and my cultural knowledge to
create a synergy to do things nobody else is doing," she says.
Nuevo Punto is focusing first on the "underserved" regional
market and has plans to go national, Avella-Perez says. Hospitals,
governments, and the food and beverage, automotive and retail industries
are its initial targets.
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