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People Power
Jackie Hernández sets the pace for the powerful Latino media market
by Marguerite Rigoglioso
Jacqueline Hernández, the publisher and business brains behind People en Español, is also the epitome of the American dream.
In 1937, her mother’s family was nearly decimated in one of the more heinous acts of the 20th century: Nazi Germany’s bombing of the town of Guerníca, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War. This episode was immortalized by Pablo Picasso in his chilling painting, Guerníca, which now hangs in Madrid.
“My aunt, who’s 90, remembers that horrific event, with people––and even cows—screaming everywhere,” says Hernández. “It devastated the town. People woke up and they didn’t have homes. The whole area was gutted. To this day, the arbol de Guerníca––the tree of Guerníca––is the only thing left standing from the old town.” |
Photography by Fábio Câmara
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Many readers of People en Español can relate to the basic elements of her family’s harrowing and dramatic story—fleeing oppression in another country and rebuilding their lives in the United States. Like many Latino immigrant families, Hernández’s had to learn the language, the culture, and the ropes.
“It’s a story about survival, and starting from scratch to rebuild,” she reflects. “My parents, including my father, who’s from Cartagena, Murcia, Spain, are just two of the millions of Hispanics who left a place they are familiar with and came to the United States seeking a better life,” says Hernández, who grew up on 88th Street in New York City. That spirit of renewal and aspiration is, she observes, what ultimately underpins People en Español, the top-ranking Hispanic magazine in the country, for which she’s served as publisher since 2004.
“The magazine is about pride. It’s about our culture, and it celebrates our people,” says the top executive of the weekly magazine, which covers Hispanic and mainstream entertainment, fashion and beauty, and human-interest stories.
It’s also about circulation and revenue. Since joining the Time Inc. Spanish-language title in 2004, Hernández, 41, has overseen its steady growth. People en Español now boasts a rate base of more than 515,000—which translates to 6 million readers per issue—and ad revenues in 2007 of more than $43 million, the highest among Hispanic magazines.
“Jackie has a true passion for the Hispanic market, and this allows her to be a natural leader,” says Paul Caine, president of the Time Inc. Entertainment Group.
The intrepid executive has also transformed People en Español into a powerful franchise that offers advertisers integrated opportunities through TV, the Internet, wireless technologies, and star-studded events. One event, Los 50 Más Bellos (50 Most Beautiful), is an annual celebrity bash held in New York City. It’s broadcast on Telemundo and featured on the Warner Bros. syndicated weekend edition of Extra. Hernández has also cultivated big-name sponsors: Maybelline, Garnier, American Airlines, Verizon Wireless, and Hyundai are among the sponsors that, under her visionary stewardship, have found creative ways to get their marketing message across multimedia channels. In 2007, she and the magazine’s editor relaunched the PeopleEnEspanol.com website to include bilingual content and advertising. That same year, Hernández introduced e-mail alerts, still new in the Latino market, to more than 10,000 recipients.
“Jackie is extremely talented at bringing innovative marketing ideas to life in print, digital, or live form,” observes Caine. “She always strives for the best—whether with existing client relationships or in helping to educate others on this exciting marketplace.”
Dave Rodriguez, a multicultural marketing manager at Ford Motor Company, agrees. “She’s a great marketing partner,” he says. “Jackie and her team come to the party with creative ideas to help build our business. This means wins for everyone, and it’s what makes Jackie and People en Español a valued component in our marketing mix.”
Hernández’s reputation for excellence has led to plenty of accolades. Twice in recent years, she was singled out among Advertising Age’s top 10 players in the Hispanic market. In 2007 she was named Media Industry Newsletter’s sales team leader of the year, and in 2006 Adweek’s Marketing & Medios media executive of the year.
A Steady Rise to the Top
You don’t get to where Hernández is overnight—or even in a decade. Her current position draws on her more than 19 years in advertising sales, brand development, and international television, print, and multimedia experience.
Smarts and a strong work ethic inherited from her parents have been two of the key ingredients behind Hernández’s success. The bright daughter of immigrants earned a head start in high school by landing a scholarship to the prestigious Birch Wathen–Lenox prep school. Afterward, she attended Tufts University as an English lit and art history major, graduating in 1988. Her first job, selling classified ads for the Boston Globe, was hardly glamorous. “It was humbling and taught me the basics of communication,” she says good-naturedly about learning how to telegraph a sales pitch in four words.
From there it was a steady upward climb. Poking around the job scene in her native New York, she landed a plum position directing the special projects advertising sales team and developing strategic partnerships at The Village Voice. “I loved it—it was fun and entrepreneurial,” she says. Meanwhile, at night, she completed an MBA in marketing at Baruch College.
In 1997, Hernández made the move from sales to marketing with Modern Bride, and from there took a job overseeing marketing for Time Inc. International, where she helped develop cross-platform advertising opportunities for Time, Fortune, and Asiaweek. “I had always wanted to draw on my personal background in my job, and the Latin America component allowed me to do that,” says the bilingual professional. During that period, she received a President’s Award for her work on Leaders of the New Millennium, a project to identify new leaders of Latin America using a platform that integrated Time, CNN, CNN Español, and the Internet. Her brush with CNN led to an invitation from the network’s then international president, David Levy, to head up the global interactive sales team for CNN International and the Cartoon Network. Over the next four years, she rose to vice president of Turner International’s integrated sales team, and then to vice president of global account development, responsible for driving ad revenues from key global accounts and steering marketing, research, and sponsorship departments.
In 2004, Lisa Quiroz, then publisher of People en Español, hired Hernández as her replacement when Quiroz decided to move over to Time Warner as head of corporate responsibility.
Olivia Vela, multicultural marketing director at JCPenney, who has been working with the People en Español team for the past few years, affirms the wisdom behind the Hernández hire. “Jackie has the ability to pool all her internal and external resources to deliver top ideas to her clients—and also to execute those ideas flawlessly. You don’t always get both.” When the retailer wanted a unique way to showcase itself on the world stage, Hernández and her team delivered. They created Somos, or “We are JCPenney,” a spread highlighting Hispanic employees at JCPenney that has run in People en Español for the past two years during Hispanic Heritage Month. It was win-win: the company received a marketing boost and honored Hispanic cultural identity in one fell swoop.
Vela says Hernández also has the personal integrity to fulfill her role well. “She’s a powerful woman, but you immediately see that she’s someone you can trust,” says the JCPenney executive, who counts Hernández as one of her friends.
Secrets of Success
Intelligence and hard work aren’t the only factors responsible for Hernández’s rise to the top of corporate media. The support of mentors is another—starting with her parents. “My dad is completely self-made and one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met,” she says of the man who started out as a house painter with little knowledge of English and eventually inherited his boss’s contracting business. “Despite major surgeries and recoveries from rheumatoid arthritis, he kept working until he was 63 years old, never complaining. A few years ago, he was featured as a hero in Arthritis Today magazine. My mother, who is equally amazing, was by his side helping him with everything. They are both doers who have always seen the glass half full.”
Hernández has also benefited from a series of helpful superiors—among them, her boss, Paul Caine; Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore; company executive vice president Stephanie George; and former COO Nora McAniff. “It’s good to have more than one mentor so you can adapt different attributes from each into your own style,” she stresses.
The People en Español publisher has found that maintaining balance in her life is critical to her professional and personal well-being. One of her favorite ways of keeping her mind and body in sync is through yoga. Two or three times each week, Hernández can be found at a studio near her home in Manhattan, toughing out classes in Bikram yoga. “They heat the room to 120 degrees—it’s called ‘sweaty yoga,’ and it’s absolutely disgusting,” she says with a laugh. “What I love about it is that it’s a challenge. It’s very hard to stay focused—you’re sweaty, you’re hot, you just want to get out of there, yet you have to keep staring at that one point between your eyebrows. When you leave, your mind is calm.”
Keeping her priorities straight has also been essential. “When I first started building my team and establishing the brand, it was crazy,” she says of her current job. “Now I’ve got it to where I can leave by 6 or 7 p.m. I try to keep evening client entertaining down to two or three nights, rather than five.” Weekends for Hernández are sacrosanct, reserved for her partner, Jack Rico, founder of the bilingual and multimedia ShowBizCafe.com, a site dedicated to covering movies and Hollywood for Hispanic consumers. “He’s the yin to my yang,” she says affectionately. She also makes regular weekend visits to her parents, aunt, sister, brother-in-law, and “delicious nephew and niece,” the latter of whom she admits to thoroughly spoiling.
Advice for the Ambitious
“I’ve worked in many different positions over the past 12 years but have never changed my 401K,” Hernández laughs, noting that all of her jobs during that time have been under the umbrella of Time Warner. The lesson? “If you’re working for a company with a lot of toys in the toy box, really get out and play with all of them.”
Hernández counsels up-and-coming businesswomen to be passionate about what they do. “Don’t like it, love it—because you’re going to spend a lot of time there,” she advises. “If you’re passionate about your work, you’ll be great at it, and then it will be effortless to succeed.”
Another key, she says, is building relationships with others. “It’s important to have other women you look up to—and don’t be afraid to reach out to women to be mentors, too,” she advises. Aspiring executives should always remember that it’s a small world. “Know that anyone you meet could become your boss someday,” Hernández says.
Yet another piece of advice: keep your cool about sexism in the corporate environment and just focus on what you need to do. “Yes, some places I’ve worked have had their male ‘clubs,’ but I pretend they’re not there—and therefore they don’t exist for me. As a matter of fact, I’ve always used being a woman as an advantage. Whenever I’m the only woman in senior management at the table, I just laugh and say, ‘Here’s a fresh perspective I can offer.’ I love challenges—if something stands in my way, I decide I’m going to overcome and change it.”
One of the things Hernández is busy changing these days is the chronic lack of Latinos in corporate leadership positions. At People en Español she has spearheaded the Time Warner Hispanic Executive Program, which recruits director-level talent to cross-train in the business of marketing to Latinos. “The idea is to attract more Hispanic talent to the company,” she says. “They get what I call an ‘MBA in Hispanic marketing.’” In harnessing the power of an untapped market and cultivating the vast storehouse of Hispanic talent, Hernández is doing more than just turning a profit for Time—she may well be playing an important role in helping America’s fastest-growing immigrant group make a new home for itself while maintaining its identity and pride.
“Personally and professionally, Jackie is one of those women we all look up to,” says JCPenney’s Olivia Vela. “We’ve got a lot to learn from her.”
Marguerite Rigoglioso is a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Power of the Hispanic Market
The 44 million Hispanics in the United States make up the nation’s fastest-growing minority. That figure translates into a huge market. In 2007, Hispanic buying power was estimated at close to $900 billion. According to the Census Bureau and other studies, by 2011 that number will swell to more than $1 trillion.
“People en Español, Time, and Time Warner are leaders in this space because of the research they do on this market,” says People en Español publisher Jacqueline Hernández. The Hispanic Opinion Tracker Study, the largest study on the Hispanic consumer to date, has revealed to Time Inc., that when it comes to investing in efforts to capture the spending of this segment, the light should be a bright verde.
“People en Español”, which is written in Spanish for Hispanics and talks about Hispanic celebrities, appeals to almost 80 percent of its target––the Spanish dominant bicultural group. It’s the number one magazine in its arena by far,” says Hernández.
More and more marketers are recognizing the need to reach this segment, which has inspired Hernández to create partnerships with blue chip marketers from automotive to beauty to retail to wireless arenas. “The future of People en Español is integrated,” Hernández says. We’re not just a magazine—we’re also a fantastic bilingual website, an event marketing team, the leader in consumer research in the Hispanic market, and we own entertainment and beauty. If you want to know what’s really going on in Hispanic pop culture, you look to People en Español.”—M.R.
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