I am what you would call a completely bicultural and bilingual Hispanic, living and working in the United States. I use both languages for work and at home, to communicate with friends, family and in general in my day-to-day life.

I could easily move through life in a completely English-speaking, Americanized world. But I choose not to. That's why I need to be marketed to in a special way. Because I consume media and culture in both languages, I am invested in my heritage and perhaps most importantly, I want my children to have the same interest and respect for both how they are different and how they are like others in their world.

I'm not alone. Statistics show that a majority of Hispanics want their kids to speak Spanish, even when they themselves are not completely Spanish-dominant. That may portend the longevity of Spanish-language media, but more importantly it shows the significance of culture; our lives are not just about language.

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MillerCoors has named Interpublic Group of Cos.' Casanova Pendrill as the new agency of record for Miller Lite Hispanic marketing after parting ways with independent shop Lopez Negrete Communications in March.

"Winning with the Latino consumer is critical for Miller Lite and we are excited to welcome Casanova to the MillerCoors team and expect they'll hit the ground running in creating compelling campaigns that drive preference for the brand," Andy England, the brewer's executive VP and CMO, said in a statement.

Costa Mesa, Calif-based Casanova Pendrill, which is part of Interpublic Group's McCann Worldgroup network, ranks as the 16th-largest U.S. Hispanic ad agency with $13 million in revenue, according to the Ad Age DataCenter. The account shift means that Interpublic has recaptured some Miller Lite business after DraftFCB lost the general market account about a year ago when MillerCoors moved Lite to Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi, which still has the account. Media buying for all MillerCoors brands is at Interpublic's Initiative.

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Last week, a new ad from Cheerios was deemed controversial when media outlets discovered that the racist contingent of the idiocracy known as the YouTube comment section trashed the ad for featuring a mixed-race couple and a biracial child.

But according to data from Ace Metrix, Americans like the ad. In fact, "Good for Your Heart" (called "Just Checking" on YouTube) tested the highest of six new Cheerios ads this year and garnered attention and likeability scores 9% and 11% "above the current 90-day norm for cereals."

General Mills rightly decided not to be swayed by the rantings of deranged internet comments, telling USA Today that the supposed uproar would not affect future casting decisions.

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As Univision steals viewers from the English-language TV networks and makes a big play for their advertisers, marketing head Ruth Gaviria is behind the scenes pushing “a complete reset button” on the Spanish-language media giant’s outdated brand identity.

Colombia-born Ms. Gaviria brings a brand-management background that ranges from Procter & Gamble to publisher Meredith.  “We weren’t signaling to the community that we’re forward facing and digital and mean business,” she said.

Now Univision has a revamped master brand for the main network; second network Telefutura is reimagined as UniMas; digital is addressed in part with the launch of UVideos and audio with Uforia (note all the U’s). And Univision will have its first gateway to English viewers through an alliance with El Rey, a cable network to be launched by film director Robert Rodriguez.

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In her first six months on the job as NPR’s first CMO, Emma Carrasco created and hired two new positions in her department, helped to launch a pilot ad campaign in four cities and oversaw a branding effort that is rolling out soon.

Her aim is to grow and diversify the already large NPR audience of 26 million radio listeners every week, a task she plans to complete by upholding the principles of NPR’s “enormously important brand value” -- its journalism. “People are hungry for good, reliable content and that’s what NPR provides,” said Ms. Carrasco. 

Carving out a new position at NPR suits Ms. Carrasco, who said a running theme in her career is being the first person to take on a new role or overcome a challenge. “As a woman, and a Hispanic, I’ve always known I was going to have to prove myself in ways others didn’t, and understand that double standards would be a part of my reality,” she said, offering this advice: “Work twice as hard as everyone else -- leverage that work ethic and your skill set to find ways to adapt.”

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La Comunidad co-founder Jose Molla originally made a name for himself as a creative director on Nike, out of Wieden + Kennedy Portland and Amsterdam. Then more than a decade ago, the Argentine native and his brother Joaquin opened their own shop in Miami and Buenos Aires. La Comunidad has become a force of its own in both the general and multicultural markets, landing on Ad Age's Agency A-List this year and turning out work known for its cultural savvy--including a Volvo app that allowed users to get an x-ray view of the car, an MTV campaign that became a series on the network and a Converse campaign that brought beauty to rundown areas of Latin America.

And while it may be industry knowledge that Mr. Molla has survived a shark attack, that tidbit is just a small anecdote from this creative leader's action-packed life. Here's this week's installment of Six Things, our ongoing series uncovering little-known facts about adland's creative leaders.

1. His grandfather opened an ad agency. Luis J. Molla launched Argentine shop Exitus, in 1925. His father Rodolfo opened another ad agency, called Molla y Molla. You could say it runs in the family. 

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Can the Rojas family make Hispanics more likely to eat at Wendy's?

Whether the fictional family, which is featured in a new Wendy's Hispanic campaign launched earlier this month, can move the needle remains to be seen. But a new study by market-research firm Placed suggests that the No. 2 burger chain may have an uphill battle compared to its rivals.

According to the report, called "Dining Out in America: The Quick-Service Restaurant Landscape," Hispanics were least likely to visit Wendy's compared to McDonald's, Burger King and Taco Bell. Overall, the survey, based on direct measurement of 70,000 U.S. smartphone panelists in April that opted in to location measurement, found Hispanics 16% less likely to visit Wendy's than the average U.S. consumer. 

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Chiqui Cartagena

Yesterday I spoke at the International Council of Shopping Centers annual convention in Las Vegas on a panel called "Hispanic Markets: The Next Gold Rush." If you have been to La Gran Plaza Mall in Fort Worth or the Dessert Sky Mall in Phoenix or the newly inaugurated Plaza Mayor at the Crossroads in Oklahoma City, you have experienced one of the newest phenomena in the world of shopping centers -- Hispanic malls.

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At Univision Communications' upfront presentation, President-CEO Randy Falco posed the question "What's better, more or less?" Mr. Falco was playing the role of the deadpan moderator in a commercial spoofing AT&T's ubiquitous TV campaign in which four small children debate why it's better to have more, or be faster.

In the Univision version, Mr. Falco horrifies the kids with a scenario in which they go into a donut shop but get only half a donut. The kids rant charmingly about ridiculous, mean people who would steal their money by giving them less than they paid for.

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Hispanic consumers will soon say 'hola' to a new family: the Rojos, courtesy of Wendy's.

Hispanic marketers frequently latch on to the idea of family. According to Technomic, a family-friendly atmosphere and authentic and healthful menu offerings are particularly important for Hispanic consumers compared to the general U.S. population.

Most of the spots throughout the campaign will be in Spanish, although Mr. Bahner said that Wendy's will air an ad later this summer "that you will understand whether you speak English or Spanish."

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The U.S. Hispanic market will have a judge after all this year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as LatinWorks' Sergio Alcocer was named this week to the film jury.

Mr. Alcocer, president and chief creative officer of the Austin-based U.S. Hispanic shop, was a Cannes judge in 2011 on the print jury.

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Walmart was named the first Marketer of the Year by AHAA: The Voice of Hispanic Marketing at the Hispanic group's annual conference on Wednesday in Miami.

Tony Rogers, Walmart's senior VP-brand marketing and advertising, and Greg Warren, VP-creative marketing, accepted the award by Skype after being stranded in Chicago on their way to Miami.

In its announcement of the new honor, AHAA cited Ad Age's coverage of a Walmart presentation from the October 2012 Association of National Advertisers' multicultural marketing conference, where the two Walmart execs pledged that the company would double its 2013 multicultural ad spending. The move was part of a sweeping initiative to move the company from a silo-like approach and ensure everyone takes full responsibility for multicultural marketing.

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The top five U.S. Hispanic ideas, chosen this week in awards organized by the Hispanic creatives' group Circulo Creativo, include the first abs-building yogurt for men and an environmentally-friendly tent that doubled as a Glad trash bag at Austin's SXSW festival.

If these ideas don't seem particularly Hispanic -- although a Hispanic agency is behind each one -- it's just another sign of how integrated Hispanics have become in what WPP Chief Executive Martin Sorrell, speaking at this week's Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA) conference, called the "new mainstream."

In an advance look at Hispanic work that might do well next month at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, here are the U.S.H. Ideas awards' top five:

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The final deadline to enter the Wave Festival for Latin America has been extended to April 8. This year agencies from the U.S. Hispanic market and Puerto Rico are participating for the first time in the Wave, a leading ad festival for Latin America.

Advertising Age is partnering with the Wave to help introduce the awards, held April 15-17 in Rio de Janeiro, to Hispanic agencies in the U.S. The regional Wave Festival is organized by Meio & Mensagem, Brazil's top advertising and marketing publication and events organizer, and Ad Age's longtime editorial partner in Brazil.

All judging is done onsite during the festival, by 70 judges from 12 countries. The U.S. will be represented at the Wave next month by Luis Miguel Messianu, president and chief creative officer of Miami-based Alma, who will chair the direct category jury. The other U.S. Hispanic judges on three other juries are Sergio Alcocer, president-chief creative officer of LatinWorks in Austin, Texas; Pablo Buffagni, chief creative officer at Los Angeles-based Grupo Gallegos; and Aldo Quevedo, who joined Richards/Lerma as principal and creative director in December and takes over in April as chairman of the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies (AHAA).

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Target has tapped Rick Gomez, an alum of MillerCoors and PepsiCo, as its senior VP-brand and category marketing.

Mr. Gomez will lead marketing for all merchandise categories and brand initiatives, such as exclusive artists and licensing, as well as creative collaborations. He will also oversee multicultural marketing and Target's owned brands, which include Archer Farms and Up & Up. He fills the role vacated by Will Setliff last year.

Most recently, Mr. Gomez was VP-marketing at MillerCoors, reporting directly to CMO Andy England.He was appointed to that role in 2011 and charged with bolstering the brewer's premium light business and putting a new focus on multicultural marketing. Prior to that, Mr. Gomez spent 18 years at PepsiCo and Quaker Oats.

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MillerCoors is searching for a new U.S. Hispanic agency for Miller Lite after parting ways with Lopez Negrete Communications, which has handled the brand for seven years.

"This was a decision to mutually part ways," Rudy Rodriguez, the brewer's senior director for multicultural marketing, told Ad Age. "We really at this point are looking for new ways of continuing to drive growth with this consumer segment."

Mr. Rodriguez, who joined the brewer late last year from General Mills, said MillerCoors would consider several agencies, including Publicis Groupe's Bromley, which handles Hispanic advertising for Coors Light. Bromley "has delivered great work for us," he said, noting that Coors Light's Hispanic business has grown for the past eight years. "We have a high level of respect for them."

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Ending an unusual experiment, Heineken USA will no longer rely on a Mexican-based agency for all U.S. advertising on Tecate. Instead, the importer has selected Inspire, Dallas, to oversee English-language campaigns for the Mexican brand, Ad Age has learned.

The marketer 14 months agoshifted the entire U.S. account to Olabuenaga Chemistri, which has long handled the brand in Mexico. The consolidation – seen as a cost-cutting move -- included a limited number of English-language ads as the brand ramped up its strategy of reaching out to acculturated Hispanic drinkers.

Olabuenaga will still handle Spanish-language advertising in the U.S. But the brand was not satisfied with the English spots and tapped Inspire after a review, said Tecate VP-Marketing Felix Palau. "We realized that when a Mexican agency tries to develop English creative, it feels translated," Mr. Palau told Ad Age. "So in all honesty, we were not comfortable with the delivery."

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The call for entries is open for the Wave Festival, a leading ad festival for Latin America that includes the U.S. Hispanic market and Puerto Rico for the first time this year.

Entries are due by April 1, 2013 for the Wave.

Advertising Age is partnering with the Wave to help introduce the awards, held April 15-17 in Rio de Janeiro, to Hispanic agencies in the U.S. The regional Wave Festival is organized by Meio & Mensagem, Brazil's top advertising and marketing publication and events organizer, and Ad Age's longtime editorial partner in Brazil.

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It's never too early to start thinking about the World Cup, just 15 months away.

In a charming new McDonald's spot full of joy and camaraderie, a group of Latino guys are happily playing a hard-fought soccer game at night on a dimly-lit hard dirt court. The only illumination appears to be the tiny, shimmering sparkles of lights from nearby hills that form a breathtaking backdrop to the soccer game.

The court suddenly goes dark, right before the critical game shot is about to be taken, and the men call out for just one more minute. After the light flashes back on and the game finally ends, we see the field has been lit by a McDonald's sign in the adjacent parking lot.

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Lionel Richie's famed 1984 ballad is the centerpiece of Taco Bell's current TV ad, but it's sung as "Hola."

"It's surprising that even 20-year-olds know the song," said Taco Bell CMO Brian Niccol. "They might not know Lionel Richie, but they'll recognize the tune."

Though it seems like an odd song for Taco Bell, especially in Spanish, the ad is introducing its new Cool Ranch Doritos Locos taco, which will be available March 7, and is part of Taco Bell's largest marketing campaign to date. Using what Mr. Niccol called an iconic song translated into Spanish is the latest iteration of the chain's larger "Live Mas" campaign, which is meant to convey Taco Bell's food "not just as fuel, but food as an experience," he said.

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