San Diego, CA- The Hispanic Retail 360 Summit kicks-off reporting over 420 registered attendees including speakers from Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, CNN's Soledad O'Brien, Anheuser-Busch, Kimberly Clark, Kraft Foods, among others. This unique experience uniting decision makers from retailers and CPG's all under one roof started with a experiential tour. Guided by cultural marketing experts from XL Edge, Shopper Marketing practice of the XL Alliance; three buses packed with executives from around the country went to visit three independent stores: Supermercado Murphy's, Appletree Market and Northgate. Each store showcased their unique layout, approach and retail strategy, however, one thing was obvious and common... they were BILINGUAL, CULTURALLY RELEVANT, PACKED & VERY VERY BUSY with a consumer base that was 99% Hispanic. For those of you that missed out on this wonderful opportunity, we have created a recap of this Hispanic shopper immersion trip in this edition of YouTube's "Moments to CultuRise".

Some key learning's include these simple 1,2,3's:

#1 Care about the community where you "sell and serve"

#2 Make it an experience! Go beyond selling to becoming a family/ shopping destination

#3 Relevant assortment. From bilingual packaging to cultural displays and products from back-home, merchandising is key.

After the tour, the summit kicked-off with a powerful presentation by Carla Dodds, Director, Multicultural Marketing & Marketing Vendor Management at Walmart. One phrase she repeated and surely resonated with CPG's wasm "we are all in this together", when refering to Walmart's priority to lead with multicultural planning and migrating from a "niche" mentality to total market planning. It is clear this will be Walmart's approach to multicultural in 2010 and beyond, while integrating community affairs and experiential platforms.

With America's Top 10 Markets being 64% multicultural today, it is simply no longer logical to qualify these segments as niche! As Carla Dodds shared with the audience, "you must serve the total business with a total market approach to succeed". Not "two" budgets, but ONE that markets to a multicultural America.

So, are you ready? If your multicultural/ Hispanic marketing budget lives on a separate line that tends to get "cut" or becomes the "special program to-do IF you have extra funds..." then...you are most likely still living in a narrow/niche mentality that will not be sustainable to win.

Stay current with Hispanic Marketing insights and subscribe to www.HispanicAd.com. Get some personalized "CultuRising" for you and your company real time with Cultural Intelligence™ Coach Lili Gil: Twitter @liligil or visit www.myculturalintelligence.com.