I’m a fan of private businesses. You get to take risks and invest in long-term strategies without worrying about a bunch of ninnies whining and second guessing you – demanding short-term profits at the expense of long-term gains.

Take Cargill as an example. They’re the largest private multi-billion dollar corporation in the United States and have operations in 70 countries throughout the world. In 2007, they took what some would consider a “ risk” when they launched the Rumba Meats brand targeted at the Hispanic market of the United States.
“Oh Geez. Not another one of those people hyping the value of the Hispanic market” you may be thinking to yourself. Well, no hype here, just pure and simple strategic thinking.

Cargill saw that there wasn’t a trusted national brand and that 80% of ethnic-minority consumers shopped at standard supermarkets, but only 40% actually bought meat at those stores because the stores were missing the specialty meat cuts the customers needed.

We all can learn a lot from Cargill. Like “keep it simple” when it comes to new products and brands.
Basic economics – supply and demand. Let’s go through Cargill’s thinking: a large and rapidly growing US Hispanic population that likes certain cuts of meat…the availability of these meats are limited…there’s no nationally trusted brand…we not only have these cuts of meat, but are already shipping tons of these cuts outside the US…OK, looks like we have a winner here.

And sure enough, the Rumba brand has been a winner. Since introduced at Wal-Marts and chain grocers in June 2007, sales have more than doubled. In fact, Rumba Meat sales are projected to top $100 million annually within the next few years.

Key points:
1) If you’re not looking at the Hispanic market, you may want to take another look, especially when this population segment has a projected $1.1 trillion of annual buying power.
2) Keep it simple – supply and demand, do your homework and keep your core corporate competencies
3) Quiet the ninnies and take a risk. You may corner your own $100 million market.

FastCompany article written on Rumba Meats: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/bite-your-tongue.html

Rumba Meats 30 second spot by Digital Hause:

Written by: Mark Polito, Managing Partner – Digital Häuse
Brand Entertainment | Edutainment | Brandutainment | Digital Initiatives | Digital Media | Production | Editorial

Recently, we had the great opportunity to work with Infiniti, the luxury
car division of Nissan, and 3-D street painter Rod Tryon for a promotion
at the 2010 Coconut Grove Arts Festival held this last weekend in Miami,
Florida. The festival attracts over 150,000 people and is one of the
nation’s finest outdoor fine arts festivals, with artists from all over
showing their work.

The DH team filmed the time-lapse of Rod over a two day period as he
spent over 20hrs working in the cold temperatures working on this piece
at his barn in rural Long Island, New York.

For the festival promotion, Infiniti is distributing thousands of USB
drives with our video on it. They also are displaying the time-lapse
while Rod created another version of the 3D painting.

Rod will be creating his street paintings through February 16th, so if
you live in the Miami area check out the Infiniti booth where Rod Tryon
will be creating more of his amazing work!

www.digitalhause.com/blog or
www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1274986448244 if the embedded
link doesn’t work.