UL Press: The Herald - May 5, 2003
Entrepreneur
by Christina Hoag
For Melissa M. Giles, Urban Latino is much more than her favorite Spanish hip-hop rhythm. It's the sass-and-spice culture of young U.S. Hispanics, a style with here-I-am attitude - and a burgeoning business empire. " I see Urban Latino now as where hip-hop was 30 years ago," said the poised 20-year-old entrepreneur who founded Miami's Urban Latino Music Festival a year ago. "In 10 to 15 years, this is going to be as big as mainstream hip-hop."
Giles plans to ride that swelling wave to its crest, using the festival as her springboard to nationwide music events, a fashion line and an arts movement, all aimed at the exploding New Generation Latino - teen age and twenty-something U.S. Hispanics who grow up speaking Spanglish and chowing down hamburgers with salsa.
"I want to create a movement to display our culture - it's a vibe really," said Giles, whose mother is Venezuelan and father British. "We travel easily between one culture and another. We have two sides to us."
That micture was the pivot for last October's first Urban Latino Music Festival, which featured an array of Latin musical genres, from hip hop and reggaeton to merengue and bachata, with some R&B thrown in. It was a formula that seemed dubious to some.
"We [young Hispanics] like salsa and merengue, but we also listen to hip-hop. It occurred to me that it would be great to have a festival that had both," said the Miami Senior High School graduate who now heads her own company, Misto LES Marketing and Promotions."
"A lot of people, especially from radio stations, told me it would never work," recalled Giles.
That was before 10,000 fans flooded into Bayfront Park for the eight-hour music marathon. The event even managed to turn "a small profit" on its $150,000 cost, which was principally fronted by her father, David Giles, president of Awesome Global Events and a former South Beach nightclub owner. Giles also guided his daughter in organizing the concert.
Now promoters want to take the festival to Texas and California, and other are catching on to the same idea of mixing different Latin music genres in the same venue.
Urban Latino magazine, on of Gile's marketing partners for this year's Colombus Day event, is planning to hold its own Urban Latino Day music spectacular in New York's Central Park this summer.
This year, Giles is finding sponsors more receptive. She's already signed up radio stations, websites and magazines as marketing partners.
Her biggest coup: a freshly-inked broadcast sponsorship deal with Telemundo's mun2 cable channel, which is targeted to the bilingual Hispanic youth market. The channed mun2 (pronounced moon-dos, which means "worlds" in Spanish) plans to air a one-hour TV special on the festival, as well as give it extensive advertising.
"I was there last year, and what she did was incredible," said Joe Bernard, sales director for mun2. "She put together a pretty good show, a cross collection of musical genres all be Latinos. It was every sort of music we all enjoy."
With TV on board and such heavy promotion, this year's crowd should be larger, the concert longer and the profits heftier. "We should make about $50,000 this year," said Giles.
Like her oversize hoop earrings, heavy gold cross necklace and four-inch stiletto heels, the numbers seem almost too big for this serious, slight-framed student, who's finishing up an associate's degree in fashion merchandising at Miami International University of Art & Design in July. She then plans to go on to Florida International University to stude communications.
But Giles is already an old hand at entrepreneurship. She started buying wholesale earrings to sell at school when she was 13, and even sold her own clothes - an outfit was only good for two wearings - to make money to buy the most cuting-edge fashions.
She formed her company when she was 16 after working as one of two female members of a street marketing team, handing out promotional items at clubs, festivals, stores, the beach and the like. "I saw all the attention we would get as girls," she said. "I was like, 'Hey, I can do this.'"
Giles banded together five acquaintances into an all-girl guerrilla marketing team and hit the streets for clients as diverse as Tanqueray gin and FuBu clothing. Her team now numbers 30 high-school and college women, and she organizes corporate promotion events such as the Axe deodorant pool party, held in Miami Beach in February.
It's that sort of grumption that makes Giles an up-and-coming presence in the entertainment world, business associates say.
"She definitely has vision, and she's well respected in the community," said Ovidio Santiagom promotions director for WMIB The Beat 103.5FM, a South Florida hip-hop station that is marketing partner for the Urban Latino Music Festival. "I only wish that at 20 I had the enthusiasm and self confidence she has."
Giles is already thinking beyond the music festival. In 2005, she wants to turn it into a conference, with panels and discussions about the urban Latino genre. She's also got her sights set on launching a women's fashion line.
If anyone can do it, Giles can, say business associates. "She's a good combination of street smarts and business acumen," Bernard of mun2 said. "And she's likable. You want to help her out."
This summer, as a lead-up to the concert, Giles has got an "Urban Sofrito" event series lined up, including Latino poetry readings, art exhibitions, fashion shows, performances and film screenings.
"A lot of young Latinos are passionate about their culture and who they are," Giles said. "I think this will grow."
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