This year, we’ve seen Hispanic audiences and stars break records and make a major impact on culture. As a Hispanic person, that is music to my ears, but as a marketer, it has me bracing for impact.

When a community grows in cultural and economic influence, brands naturally start paying closer attention. And while that attention is exciting, it also comes with a responsibility to understand the audience beyond what’s expected.

I say this both as a Hispanic person and as a marketer who has had the opportunity to work on brands and campaigns that speak directly to Hispanic audiences in the food and beverage, telecommunications, and film industry. Taylor also recently had the chance to discuss this with Dr. Marcus Collins, author of For The Culture, who reminded us of how we should approach these situations. He highlighted the importance of doing extensive research and listening when creating campaigns for communities instead of going off of existing tropes or trends. So, just in case you’ve been living under a rock and missed the cultural moment, let’s look at a few stats!

• Bad Bunny’s historic NFL Halftime Show reportedly reached more than 4.1 billion total views globally across multiple streams in its first 24 hours. At this point, we’re still looking for the one person in the U.S. who hasn’t heard of Bad Bunny in 2026.
• New population and labor force records also show that Latinos now make up roughly 1 in 5 Americans, or around 68 million people.
• U.S. Hispanic buying power has reached an extraordinary $4.1 trillion, driven by population growth, entrepreneurship, and increasing educational attainment. That figure is expected to grow 32% over a five-year period, outpacing the 23% national average.
• According to a new RIAA report, Latin music generated more than $542.2 million in the first half of 2026, marking its 13th consecutive year of growth. Special shoutout to “BbY WOW” by Karol G, a former Smirnoff partner, which is currently the #1 song globally on Spotify. Seriously, add it to your playlists ASAP!
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With all of this in mind, I see an opportunity for brands to become better equipped to understand this rapidly growing market. Only a few years ago, Hispanic audiences were often treated as a niche. Now, they’re a sizable subculture. 

That means the days of simply translating a campaign into Spanish, or sprinkling in an abuelita here and there, are long gone. As the community grows, so does our ability to recognize when something feels genuinely thoughtful versus when it feels like an afterthought.

So, what should brands know?

1. The Hispanic audience isn’t one audience.

There are approximately 20 Hispanic countries across Central and South America, representing hundreds of millions of people and an incredible range of cultures, histories, and traditions. There is bound to be some variation between us.

For starters, we don’t all eat spicy food. Mexico is particularly known for its spicy cuisine, but that doesn’t mean every Hispanic person can handle the heat. Some of us simply did not receive the spicy food gene at birth. Tragic, I know.

We are also a region shaped by generations of migration. Venezuela, for example, has a significant Italian influence, while Peru has large Japanese and Chinese communities that contributed to the development of Nikkei cuisine, which blends Peruvian ingredients with East Asian flavors and techniques. Argentina’s European immigration has similarly influenced everything from architecture to food.

And we don’t all speak Spanish.

While Hispanic Heritage Month often centers Spanish-speaking cultures, Latin America is linguistically diverse. Brazil speaks Portuguese, while Indigenous languages such as Quechua and Mayan languages are spoken by millions throughout the region. French, English, and many other languages are also part of Latin America’s linguistic landscape.

There is no single Hispanic experience. And that’s what makes the community so culturally rich.

2. Hispanic advertising goes beyond the Spanish-language ad.

For many years, translating a campaign into Spanish was considered enough. Today, audiences are asking for something more meaningful.

We want brands to explore the nuances of Hispanic life rather than relying on familiar words, accents, and visual shorthand. We want campaigns about the complex relationship many eldest daughters from immigrant families have with parentification. We want brands to invest in helping second and third generation kids reconnect with languages their parents chose not to pass down because of their own complicated experiences with assimilation and otherness.

We want brands to believe in the power of niche insights. Some amazing campaigns have done exactly that. Corridos Rescue Corridos for Universal Music Publishing Group reimagined the Mexican corrido as a voice for LGBTQAI+ Latino unhoused youth, using the genre to create empathy and gather funds for a marginalized community. Coffee Mate’s The Last of the Non-Cafecito Lovers turned a very specific cultural truth into the entire premise: finding the one Latino who doesn’t love coffee. Our campaign for Smirnoff Baila con Smirnoff brought to life a literal icon, and Avocados From Mexico remixed Juan Luis Guerra’s “La Bilirrubina” raised awareness of the disproportionate impact of diabetes on Latino communities.

Sometimes, trying to speak to everyone means saying very little to anyone. A specific human insight can make a community feel genuinely seen, and that connection can build both goodwill and lasting brand loyalty.

And I think we are already beginning to see what this can look like with the growing awareness of Afro Latino identity. There is still plenty of room to better represent Afro Latino experiences, but simply creating more space for the conversation is meaningful. We can apply that same curiosity to the many other communities within the Hispanic diaspora whose stories are often flattened into one broad identity: Indigenous Latinos, Asian Latinos, LGBTQ+ Latinos, and the many people whose identities exist across multiple cultures at once.

The more specific we get, the more human the work becomes.

3. The power of the in-between.

Hispanic identity is not a single race or culture. It encompasses people with Indigenous, European, African, Asian, and countless other roots. That diversity creates experiences that are often missing from mainstream representations of what it means to be Hispanic.

I know this personally.

I am a Chinese-Panamanian and Salvadoran woman. A lot of my identity comes from the experience of being an immigrant within a Hispanic country. Moving to the U.S. was not the first time I felt like an outsider. I had spent much of my life living in that in-between space.

My childhood included moments like my Spanish speaking father going to a Chinese grocery store and using his limited Cantonese to find the ingredients we needed for dinner. Or my mother scolding me in English, Spanish, and Cantonese, sometimes all in the same sentence.

I have a friend who speaks Italian as well as Spanish because he needed to communicate with his grandfather, who never learned Spanish in Venezuela. My Chinese-Panamanian grandmother grew up speaking primarily in English in Panama, where Caribbean communities shaped the culture and language of the region. She also makes an incredible oxtail stew.

These in-between spaces are filled with history, but also with heart and humor.

In Conclusion:

Some of my favorite campaigns are the ones that uncover these kinds of human truths. Because ultimately, great advertising has the ability to make us feel a little closer to one another. It can introduce us to experiences outside of our own and, hopefully, make us more curious, empathetic, and knowledgeable in the process.

So, this Hispanic Heritage Month, I hope we all become a little more curious.

Learn about your Hispanic coworkers, friends, and neighbors. Ask about the cultures and experiences that shaped their family traditions. Listen to their stories. Challenge yourself to look beyond the narratives that have been handed to us.

And ask questions. Seriously. We’re not shy, and we’re probably going to tell you. Now that is not a stereotype. That’s just simply true.

The next great Hispanic campaign will come from asking the right questions, listening to a more specific story, and being willing to make room for the messy, funny, complicated reality that exists between cultures.

And maybe that’s the real opportunity for brands.

Not to find the perfect way to speak to the Hispanic audience, but to become curious enough to realize there was never just one.

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