Company: RED F
Company Description: Strategic marketing company RED F was recently listed by INC magazine as the #! fastest growing marketing company in America. RED F is a minority-owned business. The Hispanic Marketing division at RED F, ROJO, specializes in marketing to Hispanics in the U.S. RED F has offices in Charlotte, NC and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best Marketer

Nomination Title: Cristina Morales Haltiwanger, Marketing Director

1. Tell the story about what this nominee achieved in the past year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

RED F is a strategic marketing firm that was ranked #21 on INC magazine's list of
the 500 fastest growing companies in America in 2004.  RED F has an Hispanic
Marketing division called ROJO that has traditionally served clients in Puerto
Rico. 

"A lot of our U.S. clients were seeing our Puerto Rico work and asking if we could
do Hispanic marketing for them in the U.S," said Dan Roselli, president of RED F. 
In order to do that, we needed to broaden our capabilities. I knew the time was
right to bring in someone to manage ROJO who was truly an expert in multi-
cultural marketing, and Cristina Morales Haltiwanger was the person I wanted."

Cristina was brought on board in early 2004 and oversees every aspect of the multi-
cultural marketing division, from new business development to strategic planning
and execution.  Cristina's keen intellect, sociologist-like understanding of people
and cultures, and business savvy have landed new ROJO accounts like SunTrust,
DIRECTV and Lending Tree.  ROJO business is up 150% since Cristina came on
board.

What makes Cristina a superstar is that she is one of the few marketing execs
who has the clout and the courage to move clients away from the old method of
marketing to Hispanics--translating a mainstream message into Spanish -- and
move them toward developing messages that are culturally relevant to the
Hispanic segment. 

"Marketing to Hispanics in the U.S. requires sensitivity to what it
feels like to be a minority in this country, plus a solid knowledge of how
country of origin, level of acculturation (i.e. were they born in U.S? How long have they been in States? Do they speak any English?), language preference, and product awareness levels affect Hispanic receptiveness to marketing messages.  It is not
about simply translating a mainstream message into Spanish," said Cristina. "It's
about saying someting to them that matters.  Most mainstream messages do not
translate well to the Hispanic market."  Cristina makes no bones about telling
prospective clients that the percentage of the U.S population that associates
itself with a minority ethnic group has almost doubled in the past 20 years.  "Marketers have got to acknowledge that this group thinks differently, buys differently and builds loyalty differently," she says emphatically. 
"The Fortune 50 - 100 have someone like me on staff to help them
figure this out.  The others need experienced consultants to help them effectively
reach this growing and lucrative audience.  That's why ROJO exists."

Dan Roselli and ROJO clients alike credit Cristina with raising the bar with regard
to Hispanic Marketing.  The truth of the matter is that many companies are indeed
simply translating mainstream messages into Spanish and are then perplexed by
their project's failure. 

One client recently praised Cristina's ability to cause a shift in thinking among
their marketing group saying "Cristina helped us see that our past failed attempts
were less about lack-of-interest on the part of the consumer we were targeting and
more about how we, as non-Hispanics, were talking to that segment.  We were
actually pretty close, but close doesn't count in business; her insights and
suggestions made all the difference."

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.csiwse.org/csi/304408/40

http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2003/10/05/Business/Spanish_lessonsClases.sh
tml

http://www.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2003/01/27/focus2.html

http://www.carseverything.net/content/news/archive/2000_archive/october/article/104
9/

http://baltimore.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2003/12/08/focus1.html

http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=6223

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about this nominee:

Cristina Haltiwanger has over 10 years' multi-cultural marketing and
advertising experience working at big-brand-name companies such as Kellogg,
Ford Motor Company, Bank of America, and now at ROJO, a division of RED F. 
At ROJO, Cristina is repsonsible for developing and executing marketing
strategies for fortune 500 companies who want to reach the U.S. Hispanic market.

Cristina speaks Spanish and French.  She holds an MBA from the
the University of North Carolina and B.A. degrees in International Commerce and
Latin American Studies from Brown University.