Our Multicultural Journey
Post-College Ambitions
Nativa’s journey as a cross-cultural marketing agency began in December of 2008. Eric Diaz had recently graduated with an MBA from Northeastern University. Upon graduation, Eric and a classmate of his, Rosen Kotsev, created a small business known as DK Business Consulting. The idea was to provide expertise in three areas; marketing, logistics, and finance to small businesses (less than 10 people) in the Northeast and Midwest. Soon, however, they found the problem was that organizations of this size barely had enough money to run their own operations. As such, these companies were only interested in buying consultative services which would help them sell more. With this in mind, Eric and Rosen changed the company name to DK Web Consulting, going on to become a web design firm. Even with this change, however, the two of them could not avoid the global financial challenges that had come up during the late 2000s. After spending 2009 and half of 2010 toiling in the web design arena, both Eric and Rosen decided it was time to part ways. Keen to carry on, Eric bought out the investment Rosen had put into the business and DK Web Consulting became a company of one.
01
Building the Team
Now on his own, Eric realized that DK Web Consulting would greatly benefit from increased expertise in business development. In particular, Eric sought to bring on someone with a different set of skills that would help build the company. At the same time, he had also been attending various events hosted by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, OH. These events enabled Hispanic business owners to meet one another as well as discuss their own operations. Eric found that he regularly encountered a fellow business owner named Natasha Pongonis at these events. Speaking with Natasha, they found that they both had small, modestly successful web design businesses. Open to see what collaboration opportunities could exist, the two of them decided to put their heads together and see what new ideas they could come up with for their respective businesses.
02
Starbucks in September
As the latter half of 2010 rolled around, this small but mighty team began meeting more frequently, in particular at a Starbucks in the German Village section of Columbus. From these meetings, they concluded that they should pursue significantly bigger opportunities outside of their own region. Not long after, Eric got a call from another former Northeastern MBA classmate and now-business owner who explained that he had a client who might be a good fit for DK. The client was a Barcelona radio station named Radio Gladys Palmera, which was looking for a marketing agency to provide them with Spanish social media services. The emboldened Nativa team collaborated on a pitch to the radio station for the project. Though they would not be ultimately selected for the contract, the team realized that they had come very close to winning even without significant experience in social media. From this experience, they saw the potential to win future bids in social media marketing.
03
First Brand Wins
In 2011, the small agency finally tasted victory when Castrol Motor Oil chose DK Web Consulting to be responsible for fulfilling their Spanish-language social media requirements. While the contract was a significant boost to the company’s growth, they were just at the tip of the iceberg for what would become a boom of Spanish-language marketing via social media platforms. In that same year, Eric became aware that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, (CDC), had been visiting several of the blogs offering free guidance found on their content-churning DK website. After determining which CDC employee would be the right person to connect with at the international government agency, the DK team was welcomed to be part of the RFP (request for proposal) process to determine an agency to launch their social media campaigns in Spanish.
By this time, the two partners had also created a new company to complement DK Web Consulting known as Social Media Spanish. After impressing the client during the pitch, the team was awarded the contract and given the opportunity to launch these important social media profiles which to this day are the largest U.S. federal government social media pages with over 200,000 followers between both Facebook and Twitter. This client was the largest catch that the two entrepreneurs had landed, and one which would guide the future of the company for the next few years.
04
Multicultural Thinking
Having had success with Castrol Motor Oil and the CDC, the team now had a roster of clients that needed no introduction. At this point in 2013, social media was becoming increasingly commonplace in the world, and as such the competition intensified. Due to this, being dedicated to only social media was no longer a viable long-term option. The evolving agency knew it was time for Social Media Spanish to evolve into something greater. Out of this evolution came two new companies; Nativa, and O.Y.E. Business Intelligence. Nativa would be the new name of the company going forward which would allow the agency to do any range of digital and traditional marketing services. O.Y.E. Business Intelligence would be created to provide deep insights from natural conversations found on common social media platforms such as X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and more. The two new companies would now work side by side to provide a multicultural approach to a wide array of needs for their clients.
05
Westward to Phoenix
With the company growing steadily, the team saw a chance to expand their business horizons beyond the Midwest. They eventually settled on an ideal office space in Phoenix, AZ. Going forward, Eric would move to Arizona and head the newly established Phoenix office while the remaining team would run the operations in the Columbus office. Opening a Western office would prove to be a smart move. Within the year they landed a major client for Nativa, Henkel, Inc., with whom Nativa, to this day 12 years later, still works for on several of their large brands such as got2b. Nativa’s new Phoenix office would bring forth other notable clients in the western region including Arizona State University, Bar-S Foods, Disney, Fox Broadcasting as well as the Maricopa County Board of Elections.
06
Emergence of O.Y.E. Intelligence
In the latter half of the 2010s, O.Y.E. Business Intelligence came to be known as a data solution for large brands wanting to understand more about their diverse consumer base. The software platform was originated as a business concept in 2013 based on Nativa’s observation of the weaknesses found within standard social listening software for identifying multicultural audiences. Software of the time was simplistic in their cultural identification and would only differentiate ethnicity between online users who spoke a language other than English in their posts. Nativa’s founders saw the obvious flaws in this thinking which perpetuated the inaccurate concept that all Hispanics speak Spanish.
The Nativa team started working on a better system for identifying diverse conversations going on to win first prize in the $50,000 Start-Up Street Pitch Competition in Phoenix out of over 100 companies participating. In 2015, the O.Y.E. platform was commercially launched to segment and monitor real-time online multicultural conversations allowing clients to make educated business decisions and develop culturally relevant communications with hard-to-reach audiences. O.Y.E. today is proud to have worked with a diverse mix of well-known brands including Brown-Forman, Southwest Airlines, Disney, MassMutual, Big Lots, and many more.
07
Government Partnerships
In the Fall of 2019, one of Nativa’s biggest milestones in the company’s history transpired. Having thrown their hat in the federal bidding ring as a certified diverse 8a company by the SBA, Nativa won two important government contracts. One of the contracts was for the Ohio Army National Guard, and the other for the Ohio Air National Guard. These game-changing opportunities enabled Nativa to vastly expand its offerings into areas such as staff augmentation, talent acquisition, and much more. Today, Nativa has become a known partner for federal, state, and local government agencies that are seeking a unique perspective for their marketing objectives.
08
2025 and Beyond
In 2025, as part of a restructuring of Nativa to prepare it for the next stage of its growth. Nativa now operates OYE Intelligence as one of its primary services allowing it to offer these cultural data insights as part of every project that is performed. The Nativa team is stronger than ever and has a roster of well-known brands and organizations that it supports including Brown-Forman, Henkel, Inc. the American Red Cross, and FEMA among others. We are proud of where our path has taken us and look forward to the next step of our growth.
09
Nativa of Tomorrow
From these humble beginnings, the small two-person business has grown and evolved numerous times in order to adapt to the ever-changing business landscape that was encountered. Nativa’s endeavor to become a top cross-cultural marketing agency will not have a linear start nor finish. Rather, Nativa chooses to be flexible and responsive so as to readily take on the challenges which lay ahead.
All Nativa’s founders know for sure is that they will continue to change so as to best serve clients who want to engage authentically with their audiences.
