• Ad Age, Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, January 6, 2009 11 AM

Amid drastically declining membership, The Boy Scouts of America is working on an integrated marketing campaign for its centennial with Fleishmann Hilliard and will begin to aggressively target Hispanic youth through the Hispanic Communications Network, an amalgamation of media portals, Max Lakin reports.

"This is really the launch of the brand to the Latino population in the U.S.," says HCN's president, Carlos Alcazar. He says the first challenge is to establish an infrastructure of sufficient bilingual and Latino staff, as well as appropriate information that can support new Hispanic membership.

Rick Cronk, former national president of the Boy Scouts, told the Associated Press: "We either are going to figure out how to make scouting the most exciting, dynamic organization for Hispanic kids, or we're going to be out of business."

Not all youth are Boy Scouts, as we know, but that doesn't mean that they aren't gainfully diverted from doing nefarious deeds. Out in L.A. last week, 19-year-old Matthew Doolan and his pierced lip won the first-ever West Coast Spinning Championship on Hollywood Boulevard while promoting a nearby store.

"As the crowd cheered, Doolan threw an arrow-shaped sign 10 feet in the air and caught it behind his back," Alana Semuels writes in the Los Angeles Times.

"He twirled the arrow and wheeled it around his body, creating a blur of red, then halted its revolution precisely so the Virgin Megastore logo stopped right-side up." ;

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