Ethnic marketing focuses on segmenting an audience into niches. One advertising agency believes that with the right campaign in English, a marketer can focus on the mainstream audience yet reach all diverse groups. Crossover Creative Group is a specialized advertising agency designed to bridge the gap between the general and the diverse markets. It has considerable experience in communicating with consumer markets as well as personal familiarity with how diverse populations feel, both necessary to address this issue. Working through general market agencies or directly with clients, Crossover ensures that mainstream advertising includes multicultural (urban) audiences, and builds both traffic and brand relationships. The Crossover perspective: diverse populations want to be, and in fact are, an integral part of the consumer mass marketplace and should be addressed in an integrated manner. Crossover services include strategic planning, creative, media, and consumer research. Current clients are Safeway, Union Bank of California, Quik Stop Markets and Southland Mall. Contact Steve Climons, President, 415-621-1767, crsovrsc@flash.net.

White Flight is a funny, daring, and touching full length fictional drama, set in 1973, of two boys, one white and one black, who take steps to undermine the efforts of the white boy's father to sell the longtime family home and move to the suburbs. Not a documentary, the film is adventurous and funny, not what one would expect from this type of subject matter. Large grant requires completion by Summer 1999. It is the firm belief of the Producer and staff that the worldwide recognizability of "white flight" and nostalgia for "the old neighborhood" should guarantee a wide audience. This, coupled with a charming tale, a low budget, and a dedicated writer/producer, should offer substantial profit potential to investors. Clear Window Productions of NYC is seeking investment, investment referrals, and visibility for the fundraising portion of its debut feature. For more information, visit www.clearwindow.com, call Patrick J. Shields, 212-929-5396, or e-mail prat@msn.com.

The LatPro Network, a membership organization for bilingual professionals who speak Spanish or Portuguese and English, launched the first career management website for bilinguals in the US and Latin America in 1997. LatPro provides job search advice, news and employment opportunities for its members and free employment advertising to recruiters. Its free online newsletters, Latin America Conference Online, Latin Career News and Latin IT News, all target Spanish and Portuguese speaking professionals. LatPro targets bilinguals in Finance, Engineering, HR, IT, Manufacturing and Management with salaries above $45k. LatPro currently hosts over 21,000 website visitors monthly and counts more than 13,000 mailing list subscribers, numbers which grow as much as 15% a month. Visit www.LatPro.com or contact President, Eric Shannon, LatPro.com, 305-436-3821.

CulturalAccessWorldwide is now Access Worldwide Communications, Inc., an outsourced marketing services company with unique expertise in reaching Hispanic, African-American and Asian markets. Access Worldwide changed its name to better communicate the full range of marketing services that it delivers, following Access Worldwide's recent acquisition of AM Medica Communications Limited, a strategic medical education company serving the pharmaceutical industry. Today, Access Worldwide provides outsourced marketing services to more than 100 clients in the telecommunications, financial services, pharmaceutical, consumer products and utilities industries. Access Worldwide's services include strategic planning and market research services; direct marketing programs; inbound and outbound teleservices in 15 different languages; proprietary medical databases; medical education and meetings management; sales productivity systems, and ethical drug sample fulfillment. Access Worldwide has over 1,300 employees and representatives in offices throughout the United States. For Market Research Services, call Jennifer Lynch, Cultural Access Group: 650-965-3859. For Direct Marketing and Teleservices, call Chris Purdy, TelAc Teleservices Group: 800-522-3447, or visit the web site at www.accesscag.com.

The American Advertising Federation (AAF) and Procter & Gamble are conducting a national baseline study of diversity and multicultural advertising practices. Aimed at AAF's corporate members plus the 100 largest advertisers, 100 largest media companies and 100 advertising agencies as reported in Advertising Age, the study will serve as a benchmark to evaluate the industry's progress over time. It will also provide companies with benchmarks to compare their own progress with industry norms for their business segment. The Foundation, an organizer of a January summit on multicultural markets and media, also will host an exclusive roundtable for industry decision makers, key regulators and national lawmakers to address critical industry issues. This event will be held in conjunction with AAF's gala ad industry diversity luncheon on February 22 at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. AAF's comprehensive agenda of diversity and multicultural marketing programs are designed to improve advertising's track records in ethnic advertising and in tapping multicultural talent. Call Heide Gardner, Vice President, Diversity and Strategic Programs, 202-898-0089.

What direct marketing strategies work best to target America's Hispanic, Asian and African-American consumers? Find out when you attend the "Direct Marketing to Multicultural Markets" conference sponsored by the Institute for International Research. A distinguished roster of speakers will discuss leveraging internal consumer data, cluster analysis, understanding consumers' product affinities and effectively using direct marketing tools to build relationships. Panelists include representatives from: Bell Atlantic, Avon Products, MetLife, BMG Direct-Latin Club, Readers Digest and Southwestern Bell to name a few. The Conference will be chaired by Multicultural Marketing Resources, Inc. All attendees receive a free six-month subscription to this newsletter. Conference fee, $1395. Call IIR, 212-661-3500 ext 3111.

Companies wanting to reach emerging markets are now looking towards their own internal databases. Ethnic Technologies, LLC, a pioneer in database segmentation, offers "E-Tech,"® a file appending system which companies can use to learn more about their own customers' demographics and preferences using their own database, leading to increased sales. "E-Tech"® uses a series of computer programs and extensive tables of both first and last names to perform a detailed analysis of each name on either a residential or business database. A company can then target offers by ethnicity, religion and language preference. "E-Tech"® classifies over 170 ethnic groups with a better than 90% accuracy rate. How many of your customers are African Americans? Which have unique African names? Which are Islamic? "E-Tech"® answers these questions, enabling marketers to both tailor sales messages for maximum effectiveness and respond to the growing recognition that ethnically sensitive promotions impact the bottom line. Call Ginger Nelson or TJ Lindsay, 201-440-8923.

What do direct marketers worldwide need to know in order to successfully market to Hispanic communities both in the U.S. and around the map? Find out this March by joining more than 400 marketers from around the world at The Direct Marketing Association's Hispanic Marketing Conference, "Exploring New Frontiers in Hispanic Direct Marketing," to be held in NYC, and develop strategies to excel in these growing markets in the U.S. and in Latin America. Sessions include Internet Direct Marketing, Loyalty Programs, Business to Business, Sports Marketing and Hispanic Direct Response TV. Contact Gianna Renzulli, DMA, 212-790-1517.