General Mills and Macias Creative say Hispanic culture now shapes mainstream America

Brands that still treat Hispanic Americans as a niche audience deserving a little extra attention once a year are misreading the market, according to two executives working in US multicultural marketing.

General Mills' director of multicultural marketing, Glory Alcántara, and Macias Creative's president and chief creative officer, Marcos Macias, made the case in an interview at the agency's Miami offices as Hispanic Heritage Month ended on 15 October.

Both argue the industry needs a fundamental rethink. The task, in their view, is not only to market better to Hispanic Americans but to accept that Hispanic culture is increasingly shaping mainstream American culture.

The scale of the market

The latest Census Bureau estimates put the US Hispanic population at 70.1 million, or 21% of Americans. UCLA research valued US Latino economic output in 2024 at $4.4tn, a figure that would make it the fourth largest economy in the world if it stood alone.

Growth matters as much as size. NielsenIQ reports that Hispanic households made up one in three of the new US buying households added from Q1 2022 to the close of 2025.

Even so, the two executives say many brands are still working from an outdated approach.

Beyond translation and stereotypes

Macias, who has spent more than 20 years helping brands link culture and commerce, describes progress across the industry as frustratingly uneven.

“We still find ourselves having the same conversation we were having 20 years ago, with some brands,” he says.

The traditional model was to build a campaign for the general market and then adapt it for Hispanic audiences, often simply by translating it into Spanish. That ignores the fact that Hispanic America is not a single Spanish-speaking community.

Many second-, third- and fourth-generation Hispanic Americans mainly speak English while keeping strong ties to their heritage. Consumers in Miami, shaped by Caribbean influences, may also have cultural reference points quite unlike those of people in Texas or Los Angeles.

“We never did translations because translations actually don’t translate,” says Macias. The job, he argues, is to convey the same sentiment rather than the same words.

Alcántara points to a second misconception that she says holds brands back: the belief that Hispanic shoppers lack spending power. She cites rising educational attainment, entrepreneurship and social mobility, and says marketers often underestimate demand for premium products among Hispanic shoppers.

The risk, she suggests, is that brands keep basing decisions on an imagined Hispanic consumer rather than on the people buying today.

Hispanic insight leading the mainstream

The bigger shift, the pair say, is the reach of Hispanic culture well beyond Hispanic audiences, across music, entertainment, sport and food.

Bad Bunny is one example. His rise to global fame and his Super Bowl halftime appearance have drawn fans far outside Puerto Rican and Spanish-speaking audiences.

Macias also cites Modelo, the Mexican beer brand, whose advertising has centred on values such as resilience and determination rather than making ethnicity the main message.

“I see brands win with cultures outside of Hispanic when you do Hispanic well,” he says.

That idea is changing how General Mills works. Alcántara says the company used to make ads for the general population and hope they would land with Hispanic consumers. It is now increasingly trying the opposite: starting with Hispanic cultural insight and looking for universal values that can reach a wider audience.

“If you’re not thinking Hispanic within your broad base plan, you’re out of the game,” she says.

Neither executive believes this means diluting cultural detail so that work appeals to everyone. They argue that authenticity is often the very thing that makes culturally rooted work attractive. The challenge is to find shared human truths without erasing what makes each community distinct.

How General Mills is applying it

A recent campaign for Cheerios Protein shows the approach in practice. Macias Creative worked with the agency Mother from the start of development, instead of joining later to make a Hispanic adaptation.

The work played on the idea of finally finding “the one you’ve been looking for”, drawing on the visual language of romantic comedies and telenovelas.

The choice of music was among the most telling decisions. Instead of an obviously Latin track, the team picked R&B duo K-Ci & JoJo, whose songs carried cultural weight with the brand's target of second- and third-generation Hispanic Americans.

For Macias, the decision showed why understanding the audience matters more than reaching for familiar shorthand. “We helped General Mills not make the mistake of forcing things to look or feel Hispanic when it wasn’t necessary,” he says.

The distinction has real consequences for brands used to treating multicultural creative as something added late in the process.

The same thinking runs into retail and community work. In San Antonio, Macias Creative created ‘Flavors of Fun’ for General Mills, a shopper marketing programme run with the retailer H-E-B. Its inspiration was Día del Niño, a Latin American day celebrating children, and it took the form of a family experience linked to San Antonio’s Fiesta celebrations.

Further east, the South Florida programme ‘Despierta Sonrisas’ (Awaken Smiles), run with Publix and Café Bustelo responds to the insight that many Hispanic households do not see cereal on its own as a full breakfast. Rather than just advertising cereal, it links General Mills products to breakfast habits that already exist.

Both projects reflect the view that cultural relevance has to reach beyond advertising into products, partnerships, stores and the wider customer experience.

Alcántara adds that value means more than price, especially while consumers face higher living costs. Brands, she says, need to think about how their products and experiences actually improve people’s lives.

Should ‘Hispanic marketing’ disappear?

If Hispanic culture is becoming inseparable from mainstream American culture, the question follows of whether brands should eventually drop the label “Hispanic marketing” altogether.

Alcántara hopes they will. She argues that requesting a separate Hispanic plan can unintentionally cast the audience as outside the mainstream, when multicultural understanding should sit at the heart of brand strategy.

She also warns against dropping the distinction too early. For now, she says, keeping Hispanic marketing visible helps keep it a priority rather than letting it vanish into a supposedly universal approach that misses cultural differences.

Macias agrees, noting that the old idea of a single “total market” campaign often overlooked the nuances that give cultural connections their meaning.

In their view, the answer is not to abandon multicultural expertise but to bring it into the earliest discussions on brand strategy, innovation and growth.