Bilingual In The Boonies » marketing

Life is a Special Occasion. For Real.

Carrie — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 15:51:11 +0000

Hallmark came to Nashville last week and I snagged an invite to a small gathering they had with local bloggers.

It was mostly conversation about celebrating the little things in life, and getting to know a little bit more about how they go about creating the cards and products that help us express words and feelings.

I learned some of them have titles such as “emotioneer” and I would love to be a Hallmark “font specialist,” as I have a thing for fonts. I love how they evoke emotion by the very simple point of whether there is a serif or not, whether it is curly or long or not. Anyway, I can’t design a lick, so that is out. I have to stick to writing.

Quickie disclosure: I am working with Hallmark over on the Tiki Tiki on the Life is a Special Occasion campaign, which means they sponsor essays in the ‘del alma” section. (Here’s the last post on “dichos of encouragement.”)

OK, one of the things we did during our gathering in Nashville was to announce what is a most special occasion in our lives. Hallmark gave us a t-shirt and a purple Sharpie.

See what I wrote: “Singing in Spanglish with my Daughter…is a Special Occasion.”

I explained I often have to trick Maria into speaking Spanish with me via games and song. And when she sings along with me to anything from Julio Iglesias to Marc Anthony to In the Heights, I am delighted, elated, overjoyed, proud.

This super cool tee — a blank one — and other cool Hallmark stuff will be given away soon on the Tiki Tiki. Watchea for it.

And, if you want to see the beautiful and talented Nashville crowd — the Center of the Blogging Universe — and what they wrote, check out the photo gallery. (The photo of me was taken by the talented Kevin Cozad, a Hallmark photographer. Imagine that job! Wepa!)

Now, tell me:

What makes a Special Occasion for You?

I have no idea what a chalupa is or We’re not all the same

Carrie — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:16:00 +0000

Way back in the dark ages of Nashville, when there were no more than like 5 Latinos here (the 1990s), a co-worker asked me what a chalupa was. I told him I had no idea. There was shock I did not know the answer.

“I’m Cuban. Cube-AN. Not Mexican. We don’t traditionally eat chalupas.”

Needless to say, I have spent a lot of my time here explaining that “we’re not all the same.”

So, keeping up the conversation I recently started about marketing to Latinos, my friend John at Hispanic Nashville Notebook posted a series of commercials targeted at Latinos. This particular Bud Light one cracked me up because it plays on the idea that Americans see us as all the same. The other commercials John posted are worth a look. Go see them here .

And, I still don’t know what a chalupa is.

Pio Pio little Valentina Paloma

Carrie — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 13:31:00 +0000

canada.com image

We Latins are all related, right?
Or, we have a cousin who knows a cousin who knows a cousin of the person we are tracking down?
Well, who here is related to the beautiful new mother that is Salma Hayek?
Valentina Paloma needs a Pollito shirt.
What do you think, Candela?