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.
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