Advertising
Age published probable Hispanic Heritage Month content providing pointers
on partnering with multicrumbtual
advertising agencies.
While the
perspective spotlighted common mistakes, potential pitfalls, and marketing microaggressions,
there were no blatant references to cultural cluelessness, crumbs,
or Prime
Redlining.
So, it sorta
feels like whitewashing systemic racism.
When to partner with a multicultural agency—and how to structure the work
By Sabrina
Sanchez
For many
agencies, creating campaigns for multicultural audiences is a challenge. Some
handle it in-house, translating existing work or trying to tack on cultural
relevance at the end. But agencies that specialize in multicultural work say
that approach leaves little room for cultural insight to shape the strategy. Ad
Age asked three members of the Ad Age Small Agency Network with Hispanic and
multicultural expertise—Cien+ (CulturePlus Group), BeautifulBeast and Macías
Creative—when to call in a partner, how to divide the work and how to manage
the client relationship. The following guide was assembled from their answers.
Step 1: Check when the work calls for a partner
Macías Creative
leaders—Marcos Macias, founder and chief creative officer; Alex Macias,
managing partner and chief operations officer; and Ernesto Ruiz, executive
director of strategy and accounts—identified three situations that call for
cultural expertise:
If the assignment explicitly targets Hispanic or multicultural audiences
Bring in a partner
while developing the strategy.
If growth depends on a market where Hispanic consumers are a major
economic force
Bring in cultural
expertise, even if the brief does not explicitly name that audience. Macías
Creative cited markets such as California, Texas, Florida, New York and the
Southwest where winning with Hispanic consumers can be critical to growth.
If cultural nuance is central to the strategy or idea
Consider a
multicultural agency partner, even if the brief does not name a particular
audience. Macías Creative pointed to cultural spaces involving food, family,
sports, music, identity and traditions—all of which are places where deeper
fluency can help shape the work.
The agency also
offered signs that a team may need outside expertise:
• If research is
being used as a substitute for established cultural expertise.
• If a few Hispanic
people on the team are being treated as proof of Hispanic marketing capability;
that capability also requires dedicated expertise, experience, tools and
processes.
• If the U.S.
Hispanic market is being approached as one audience, without accounting for
differences in country of origin, language preference or relationship to
American culture.
Another sign, Macías
Creative said, is asking someone at the end of the process whether the creative
“feels right.” That person “probably needed a seat at the table much earlier.”
Flor
Leibaschoff, BeautifulBeast’s co-founder and CCO, said general-market agencies
should not wait for a sign; they should already be working with Hispanic and
multicultural agencies. To her, a plan built around translating general-market
work, rather than developing a strategy for the audience, already shows the
need for a different approach.
Claudia Avans
of Cien+ posed a broader question: “Do we have the right perspectives at the
table for this opportunity?” Cultural insight can help an agency understand a
particular audience, she said, and it can reveal shifts that matter to the
wider market.
Step 2: Decide whether you’re creating or adapting
How an agency
approaches its creative determines when a multicultural partner needs to join
and what they can contribute.
If the work needs a new strategy, platform or idea that will resonate
with Hispanic audiences
Bring the partner in
from the beginning while the insight and creative direction are still being
developed. “If a perspective could change the strategy, give it a chance to
shape the strategy,” Avans said.
If the assignment involves adapting an existing idea
For an assignment
focused on adapting an existing idea for a specific audience or market,
bringing in that expertise later can sometimes make sense, Macías Creative
said. Even then, Macías Creative said both agencies should discuss the
audience’s needs and agree on their approach at the outset. The partner should
help determine whether adaptation is the right assignment.
Joining early lets a
partner help shape the insight, idea and plan. Once creative is underway, their
role can narrow to changing what has already been decided. “They become
translators and fixers instead of strategists,” Leibaschoff said. If
collaboration cannot begin at the pitch or strategy stage, she said, bringing
the partner in for the brief is the minimum.
Step 3: Agree on how the agencies will
work together
The next decision is
what expertise the assignment needs, and how each agency will contribute.
If the assignment calls for several kinds of expertise
Avans described
several ways to assemble a team: a lead agency can bring a cultural partner
into the strategy phase; two agencies can build the brief together and split
leadership by expertise; a partner agency can join for a few critical sessions;
or different partners can lead at different stages. A cultural agency might
also bring in a technology, data, creator or community partner when the work
calls for it.
If the question is who works directly with the client
Leibaschoff named
three arrangements she has seen work: an introduction, where the general-market
agency connects the partner agency with the client and lets it work with them
directly on that part of the business; white-label work, where the partner agency
works behind the scenes under the lead agency’s name; or a hybrid, where the
partner meets the client but the lead agency keeps the relationship. Any
arrangement can work “as long as it’s agreed on from the start,” she said.
Cien+ has also worked both behind the scenes and directly with clients,
depending on the assignment.
Macías Creative
draws a different line. It will not take an assignment where its team has no
direct client contact, at least for key meetings. The agency says passing
cultural insights through another team can weaken the collaboration and reduce
the partner agency to an execution role. One setup Macías Creative described
involves a small senior team working alongside the lead agency from the
strategy stage.
Before work begins,
agree on who owns the client relationship, who presents the cultural insight,
who makes decisions, how feedback and approvals move, how the work is credited,
and how fees and billing will work.
Those choices can
lead to different arrangements. In a healthcare partnership described by Cien+,
the agencies led the general and Hispanic market work respectively and shared
the client relationship. On a consumer goods launch described by Macías Creative,
the lead agency kept the client relationship and led strategy, creative and
execution, while a senior Macías team contributed cultural insight from the
strategy stage.
Step 4: Avoid the mistakes that weaken partnerships
The agencies pointed
to five recurring problems:
1. Bringing in
expertise too late—or giving it too little time. Once strategy and creative are set, a
cultural partner has little room to shape either.
2. Leaving roles and
fees unclear. Responsibilities,
decisions, client contact and billing need to be settled before work begins.
3. Falling back on
translation under deadline pressure. Even with a partner agency involved, a team may revert to translating
general-market work, reducing that partner to a translation role.
4. Creating a
one-person department. A single Hispanic employee is expected to cover strategy, creative,
media and social listening. “That’s a lot of hats for one head,” Leibaschoff
said, “and it’s not fair to them or to the work.”
5. Treating the
partner as competition or as an execution vendor. “If you value the expertise enough to
bring in a partner, give them a real seat at the table,” Macías Creative said.
Step 5: Consider what the partnership can add
Sharing work with
another agency may raise concerns about revenue and the client relationship.
Leibaschoff argued that the greater risk is failing to help a client pursue the
opportunity: the client may eventually find someone else who will. “It’s
not about splitting the pie; it’s about making the pie bigger,” she said.
Macías Creative made
a similar point: work that initially looks like shared revenue may lead to
additional, dedicated budget for multicultural efforts.
Avans framed the
benefit in terms of what the lead agency can solve for its client: “The lead
agency becomes even more valuable because of the ecosystem it can bring
together.”
This story used
AI-assisted tools to summarize and structure insights from Ad Age’s original
reporting. It is based solely on the responses Ad Age received for this story,
and was reviewed by editors and reporters to ensure accuracy, clarity and
context.
