Minority owner and/or certified – not a swing vote for a Hispanic agency.

   We have received hundreds of e-mails and calls asking us for the phone number of Caballero, Cisneros & Yzaguirre, LLC.   I stated in my last post on El Blog “Imagine (operative word) Eduardo Caballero, Henry Cisneros and Raul Yzaguirre launching a company with the main purpose of ensuring that independent Hispanic advertising agencies, Hispanic owned media and Hispanic owned companies get a fair shot at the business.”

Well it seems that too many did not want to imagine but believe that this company was launched.

Especially in the light of the outcome of the Nissan & Infiniti ethnic marketing assignments just awarded to Omnicom’s new entity that includes Dieste, Inc.

Omnicom did stand up to the occasion and create an entity that even though not minority certified (an initial requirement in the RFP by Nissan),  but minority owned on paper.

The interesting issue is the acceptance of Nissan that initial requirement of minority ownership and certification was not RESPECTED at the tail end of the process.

Here is were I have the problem with the issue, since Nissan enticed real minority owned agencies (Hispanic & African American agencies) that ARE CERTIFIED MINORITY COMPANIES to a pitch that they could NOT WIN, since the initial parameters were not RESPECTED through the end of the process.

If Caballero, Cisneros & Yzaquirre, LLC did exist.  Nissan and Infiniti would be a prime target.

I would also have to fault agency search consultants on this also, since they should have ensured that the initial parameters were valid up till the end of the process.

It feels like they pounded a square peg through a round hole on this one.   Unacceptable and shameful  NISSAN.

Anyway, congrats to Dieste.