Question: How do you feel about setting up press junkets, with large numbers of reporters interviewing a subject at once, versus one-on-one interviews?
ANSWER: From a time viewpoint, junkets can ferry in a larger quantity of reporters for a single press conference-style interview. But from the viewpoint of the
subject, the junkets can literally be too much of a good thing as a crowd of journalists try to elbow each other out to get a question in.
One person who is no stranger to junkets, and no fan of them either, is legendary British actress Charlotte Rampling, whose new film "Heading South" opens this Friday (the
21st) in Los Angeles and other cities around the country. For the promotional tour of "Heading South," Rampling politely insisted that all interviews be conducted on a person-to-
person basis.
"In junkets, sometimes it is so crazy when you have 10 minutes and you have 30 people in a day coming through," she says. "I don't like junkets at all. They're awful. It's
an interesting gymnastics, but you can't do it for it too long. You literally go blank because you're repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating."
However, Rampling also advises against scheduling too many single interviews in a limited time frame. During the New York stop of her tour, Rampling and her PR representatives
balanced her schedule to include individual interviews with writers from high profile media including The New Yorker, Salon and Film Threat.
"With one-on-one interviews, you talk about things differently," says Rampling. "One-on-one is fine, as long as you don't have too many in a day - but it's part of the process
so people can talk about your film, especially something like 'Heading South,' which is not a big blockbuster film."
Question: True or false - Hispanic consumers prefer Spanish-language text when being approached via promotional and marketing outreach?
ANSWER: A new survey from Quepasa Market Intelligence would suggest the answer is "True" - or "Si," if you prefer. The survey, conducted electronically of 1,000
bilingual Hispanics, found 84% of those polled preferred to read product labels in Spanish.
This is a significant finding, considering the Hispanic purchasing power registers a compound annual growth rate of 7.5%, versus 2.8% for total U.S. disposable income. That
figure comes from HispanTelligence, the research arm of the magazine Hispanic Business. U.S. Census data predicts a Hispanic population of more than 43.0 million by
the end of this year 2006, or 14.4% of the total population.
CONTACT: Charlotte Rampling, [email protected].