OYE! Creates Actionable Hispanic Market Insights for Fortune 500 Firms
Listen! Listen Up! Listen Here! That’s what the Spanish word OYE! means.
OYE! the startup, is a business intelligence business co-founded by Natasha Pongonis, CEO and Eric Diaz. CFO.
OYE! provides organizations with unique insights into public Hispanic conversations online, regardless of the language those audiences are speaking. Not only does OYE! identify; its natural language processing solution is designed to drive insights that marketers can use in developing campaign strategy, messaging, and audience targeting.
Why is that paramount to virtually any company’s growth strategy?
Because at 56 million people and growing at 2.2 percent a year, Hispanics represent a huge market opportunity for virtually any company making anything. Plus, nearly one in four Millennials identify as Hispanic. From a brand and loyalty perspective, this is a population that marketers want to win over early and retain.
Second, successful online marketing initiatives today are all about segmentation and conversation—and many, if not most, of those conversations are happing online—on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, not mention blogs and product reviews.
OYE! helps client companies, such as MassMutual, Big Lots, and Henkel Corp. understand how online Hispanic audiences feel about their brands—whether those online audiences are speaking in Spanish, English, a combination, or both.
Oye! Helps MassMutual Advance Its Brand with Hispanics
In 2015, OYE! partnered with Fortune 100 company, MassMutual, to use relevant, publicly available social media data to listen to what Hispanics were saying about MassMutual and its competitors.
MassMutual learned that the top 5 brands delivered over 75 percent of share of voice among U.S. Hispanics, and that those firms had dedicated campaigns directed at Hispanics. MassMutual took action, launching a Spanish website and partnering with the Association of Latino Professional for America (ALPFA).
Through online listening, OYE! was able to identify MassMutual Agency superstars for their support and engagement with the Hispanic community.
By using OYE! insights on a monthly basis, MassMutual has experienced a month over month upward trend in Hispanic online mentions. Positive sentiment has increased consistently, up to 60 percent.
Hispanic does not mean homogenous
“These well-known brands and others are using our software to capture the authentic Hispanic voice,” Pongonis said. “Each of our clients has a demographic in mind. They what to know what the conversation drivers are for that demographic.”
And there’s where OYE!’s expertise really shines.
When it comes to use of Spanish and English among Hispanics in the U.S., about a third are bilingual, about 25 percent mainly use English, and about 38 percent mainly use Spanish. OYE! software leverages public data and conversations to help clients understand how and where a particular segment communicates. The differences are generational, geographic, and situational.
“With OYE! clients can go deeper into identifying the ethnicity of the Hispanic consumer regardless of what language they are speaking,” Pongonis said,
The more OYE! listens to the words and phrasing in online conversations, the smarter the application becomes, capturing nuances that help OYE! clients refine segmentation and target their marketing messages to specific audiences.
Hispanic markets are just the beginning for OYE!
“Our algorithm can scale to other languages and other ethnicities,” Pongonis said. “We’re validating our idea and software, and gaining clients and learning every day how to better define online conversations, in this case Hispanic. Our strategy is to apply our same technology to identify other ethnicities.”
Take Asian, for example, another non-homogenous demographic that according to the latest census data has is the fastest growing (at 3.4 percent) racial or ethnic group.
“There is so much that we want to do to continue to optimize our technology, including making sure that we are able to attract the right strategic partners and investors who will help us grow and scale,” Pongonis said. “It’s all about putting our brand and name out there for potential client.”
