2025 Hispanic Content Report, HispanicAd
“One thing is true with AI: the outputs are only as good as the inputs. Creating great work still requires the excellence of craft and deep understanding of the brand, consumer and media environment …”
Ad agencies have long been looked upon to take the lead on creative. But there’s now a movement for the brands themselves to be a content creator.
There is also the growing conversation on how best to consider user-generated content. How does Louis Maldonado, the Partner and Managing Director at d expósito & Partners, believe all of these content creation vehicles can best come together to present a brand as relevant and authentic?
“As with many things in life, it takes a village to effectively build and nurture a brand, and everyone has a role to play,” he says from the advertising agency’s New York home offices. “However, one entity with deep command and expertise in the brand’s essence and voice needs to take the lead and work in lock-step with the client to be the brand steward, collaborating with all of the other parties to build the brand in a cross-channel fashion. That was true before and remains even more true today given the increased number of players and the extreme priority to build a brand with an innovative, differentiating organizing idea from which all parties bring to life across channels and platforms.”
That’s why clients and agencies have always closely partnered, Maldonado says, with the agencies taking a lead on strategy, creative and third-party outreach — including earned media, brand partnerships, buzz marketing — to ensure brands stay relevant and vibrant. He says, “Today, the role of both parties has vastly expanded since marketing has become much more sophisticated and the ecosystem much more complex, requiring much more immediacy and real-time action.”
That’s because the agency role has expanded beyond creative to include product innovation, customer experience and retail/POS efforts. As such, Maldonado says, “We are now responsible for driving top-of-funnel brand health measures as well as bottom-funnel conversion. Clients collaborate, guide and oversee that work closely, and for reasons of brand safety have built internal capabilities to manage certain duties directly while still tapping agencies for advertising, earned media relations, branded content development, and influencer/creator engagement.”
Then there’s the consumer voice, which includes advocates and evangelists that are inspired to share what they love about the brand to foster fandom. There’s also “the well-intentioned watchdog to hold the brand’s feet to the fire and challenge them to be true to their essence and consumer promise,” Maldonado says.
Developing, managing and responding to fan communities is increasingly important, he adds, “not only because a single post or comment can incite a crisis in no time but because doing so allows the brand to be a behind-the-scenes co-creator in the UGC process and ensure a more favorable outcome for all involved.”
Managing fan communities and keeping a steady pulse on the conversation is essential work done by the d expósito & Partners social team at Résonant, which collaborates with the agency’s team at Insight Story to mine for consumer sentiments and truths that are woven throughout the advertising ideas, brand, social and influencer content Maldonado and his team produce.
“Integrated agencies, like ours, will continue to lead and play an even more invaluable role at making sure a brand’s voice is strong, authentic, differentiated, honest and active,” Maldonado says. “This is critical to a brand’s survival, particularly in an environment where its reputation can be tarnished by one misguided post with bad information or even false accusations.”
AI: Artificial Assistance Or Annoyance?
AI as a content creation tool presents opportunities and challenges. Asked what his thoughts are as it applies to the multicultural marketplace in 2025 and beyond, Maldonado responds, “While we’d be disingenuous if we said we didn’t feel a little apprehension about how generative AI could impact our industry and personal livelihoods, we at d expósito & Partners are certainly excited about generative AI and are challenging ourselves to learn the tools and use them responsibly across all stages of the creative development process; from research and strategy to concepting and production. Generative AI is certainly becoming an increasingly integral part of our business and our future, so we are eager to push the boundaries and see what we can do while simultaneously establishing the necessary guardrails and protocols to ensure our clients’ brands and consumers are safe and that all work is of quality and delivered as intended.”
Maldonado believes that there have been some “beautiful campaigns” that tapped generative AI for content creation, mostly in the form of expediting animations and graphic effects. “While the actual outputs can be done in a fraction of the time of conventional methods, a lot of time is still required to prompt the platforms for the desired outputs and do the required refinement to meet brand quality standards,” he says. “While studies by Nielsen NIQ, the IAB and others have shown that while many consumers are willing to embrace the innovation in creativity in AI-generated ads, there is also concern over authenticity and genuineness of the message.”
Additionally, the ability to emotively connect on a human level and the ethics behind the ad’s intention is an important goal. However, Maldonado notes, “technology is advancing at lightspeed and the quality is improving by leaps and bounds. We human creators at the agencies will always have a lead role in the process, learning and adapting to use it responsibly. One thing is true with AI: the outputs are only as good as the inputs. Creating great work still requires the excellence of craft and deep understanding of the brand, the consumer and the media environment to produce powerful campaigns that connect with and move the consumer audience to take the desired action. We still need to do the hard work and create the idea. That will never change, and this especially holds true when attempting to genuinely connect with diverse and multicultural audiences.”
Louis Maldonado of d expósito & Partners offers four critical things to remember that apply to all aspects of the marketing ecosystem:
– Tight collaboration across the team is critical, including client, agency, creator, influencer and publisher/platform
– Performance is key, but branding is paramount, as an undifferentiated, stale brand will never perform to its ultimate potential
– Maintaining best practices for each platform are essential, otherwise there may be missed opportunities or unanticipated snafus
– Influencers, creators and other collaborators are valuable partners to amplifying reach and lending credibility/relevance, but the brand must always own its voice and ensure integrity of the message
In recent years, using data to guide how to develop the most effective campaign based on platform and engagement efficacy has emerged as an essential part of the client/agency relationship. What are the ways d expósito & Partners are best using data to craft their road maps for clients? And, with so much focus on content, where does this leave the delivery device? Could broadcast media be in a losing battle against digital and social media, even in the U.S. Hispanic market?
Maldonado replies, “Our media team at Efectiva blends data, expertise, and insight to craft campaigns that are both performance-driven and efficient. In this case, when we refer to performance, we mean the impact on the path-to-action funnel from top to bottom. Our process begins with a precise analysis of third-party data—revealing how our target audiences engage with media. We then enrich this with platform-specific attribution and our first-party data to create a holistic view that adds much more dimension beyond the outcome afforded by third-party data. By integrating our clients’ own data, we verify the tangible business outcomes driven by each channel.”
Interestingly, while traditional television has historically lacked robust data capabilities, that’s changing. As of September 2025, Nielsen is transitioning its Big Data Survey to become its sole currency for national transactions. However, despite this previous deficiency on TV, d expósito & Partners clients have research which consistently shows that linear TV remains the primary driver of awareness. “Similarly, radio continues to stand out — especially among Hispanic audiences — for achieving mass reach,” Maldonado says. “In multicultural markets, radio builds trust and fosters connection through its influencers and deep community ties.” Ultimately, in a tech-dominated world where attention is scarce, meaningful connections—rooted in trust and culture—are more critical than ever, he concludes.
Is there one brand that “gets it” with respect to understanding how to best develop and activate content that moves the needle on an ad campaign?
“I can think of many brands that are working hard to stay at the leading edge, to experiment, learn and do their best at achieving success,” Maldonado says. “They may occasionally stumble along the way, but the brands that are bold enough to invest in the effort and money required — and that have strong agency partners to collaborate with the multidisciplinary team — are the ones that are proving to do modern marketing correctly.”
One of those brands is, “inarguably,” Tajín.
“We realize we may sound self-serving for the agency, but we genuinely believe it to be a true and accurate assessment,” Maldonado says. “Tajín has had the vision and the diligence to expand their brand beyond their core consumers of Mexican descent and generate cross-cultural appeal to gain brand fans that include all facets of today’s inclusive consumer audience. Their brand campaigns appeal to these newer fans while, simultaneously, keeping the love and cultural resonance with its core Mexican/Hispanic consumer that made the brand what it is.”
Beyond advertising, Tajín can give a masterclass on co-promotional marketing and collaborations, Maldonado shares. Case in point: a collaboration with iconic actress and singer Selena Gomez and her Rare Beauty line of cosmetics. Regarding user-generated content, the Résonant and d expósito creative teams tapped authentic consumers and included their content in Tajín’s most recent ad campaign “because it was true to the love and fervor they have” for the product.