Last March the Grammy Award-winning Mexican musical group Los Tigres del Norte-perhaps the best-known band in all of Latin America, often referred to as the "Beatles of Mexico"-played to 4,000 well-dressed fans at the Sarasota-Bradenton Convention Center. Three-quarters of them had paid $60 per ticket, and the party went on until 3 a.m. Los Tigres del Norte has sold more than 50 million albums and performed before crowds as large as 150,000. Yet despite their international fame, there was no mention of the group's concert in the local Anglo media.

To Oscar R. Parsons, the president of the convention center, the event was a wake-up call to local business. He shakes his head over the lack of recognition of the region's powerful and rapidly growing Hispanic market.

"The [Hispanic] community has a lot of money," he says. "They're honorable people, they pay their bills, and it's been kept pretty secret."

Hispanics and Latinos now outstrip African-Americans as the largest minority group in both Manatee and Sarasota counties, numbering close to 60,000 and representing 11 percent of the area's population. Foreign-born immigrants and their children account for 70 percent of that 60,000, according to Dr. Sarah Hernandez, a New College of Florida professor who focuses on international labor movements.

According to Miami-based Geoscape International, a firm that specializes in gathering multicultural market intelligence nationwide, the average annual household income for a local Hispanic family is $43,000. Annual Hispanic household expenditures on goods and services in the Sarasota-Manatee area, including things such as food, transportation and insurance, range from $500 million to $650 million.

TAPPING INTO THE MARKET One of the most compelling indicators of the power and presence of the local Hispanic community has been the introduction of Spanish-language FM radio to the area. In July 2005, CBS Radio made the decision to flip one of its Tampa-based country music stations to a full-time tropical Spanish format. In just one rating period, 50,000-watt 92.5 FM, La Nueva, jumped from 30th place to second place in the Sarasota-Bradenton market's Arbitron radio ratings for listeners 25 to 54 years of age. Luis Diaz-Albertini, vice president and general manager of the station, says, "It is very rare to ever see a jump like this."

The station is currently earning $350,000 per month in ad revenues, but Albertini is frustrated that 70 percent of that comes from individual businesses rather than advertising agencies. "There's a little bit of racial bias with media buyers from agencies," he says. "They don't trust the numbers that we're putting up, telling us, 'We need a four-book average'. [An average Arbitron rating over the course of one year.] In the meantime, they're losing market share every day. We even tell them that we'd put their current English-language ads on for a test, and they respond, 'But wouldn't it be better if the ad were in the audience's native language?' And we say, 'Exactly! Now we're getting somewhere.'"

The only other Spanish-language FM station in the area is 105.3, La Zeta, a less powerful, 6,000-watt signal coming out Zolfo Springs. In contrast to La Nueva's tropical Spanish format, La Zeta is employing a "Mexican Regional" format aimed at the predominant Mexican demographic in our area. "You don't go into Manhattan with country music, nor would you go into the heart of Alabama with smooth jazz and expect any significant audience," Bryan Hollenbaugh, the station's general manager, explains.

While not pulling numbers as strong as La Nueva, La Zeta is posting respectable ratings for its size, something that's not going unnoticed. There have been two offers to purchase the station in the past six months, but Hollenbaugh and the station's private owners are in no rush to sell. "The biggest question of the day is when will the advertising community mature enough to demand Hispanic media?" he says. "When they do, the Clear Channels will come in, and many of our mom-and-pop-type of publications and stations will fall off."

Albertini agrees: "Fourteen percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic, yet only 3 percent of dollars spent annually on advertising is allocated to this market. There's $180 billion spent on advertising per year in the United States-there is a lot of ground to be made up."

Pedro Perez, a 1996 graduate of Ringling School of Art and Design who likes to say he was "born in Miami, made in Cuba," hopes his fledgling Nuevo Advertising will ride this upward wave. It's currently the only ad agency in Southwest Florida to focus solely on the Hispanic market, and Perez has received calls from as far away as Key West for consulting advice. To date he has begun work on smaller contracts with the Tampa Bay Storm arena football franchise, the Southwest Florida Water Management District and Gold Coast Eagle Distributing, targeting the Hispanic community.