A Leadership Framework for Creating Demand in the Identity Economy
Published by: ANA
By: Louis Maldonado
July 15, 2026
For more than a decade, marketing has been shaped by a series of defining paradigms.
First came the “attention economy,” where success depended on capturing consumers’ increasingly fragmented attention. Then came the “creator economy,” where influencers, content creators, and digital communities transformed how brands built awareness, credibility, and engagement.
Both fundamentally reshaped modern marketing. Both still matter, but neither offers the kind of sustainable competitive advantage today’s marketing leaders are seeking. That’s because attention can be purchased. Creators can be hired. Technology can be licensed. Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. Media optimization has become standard practice. Performance marketing platforms continue to evolve, but eventually every competitor gains access to the same tools, the same data, and increasingly similar capabilities.
Yesterday’s differentiator quickly becomes today’s table stakes. That is the challenge confronting today’s C-suite. If every competitor can buy the same technology, optimize the same media, leverage the same AI tools, and hire the same creators, where will the next sustainable competitive advantage come from?
I believe the answer lies in focusing less on technology and more on our humanity and what really drive emotion. What I call the “identity economy.”
Across America, consumers are becoming more — not less — connected to the cultures and identities that define who they are: heritage, family, community, values, language, purpose, passions. Along with one’s age, gender, sexual orientation and physical ability, these forces increasingly shape how consumers see and navigate the world, who they trust, what they aspire to be, and the brands they choose to welcome into their lives. That shift changes the role of marketing.
In the identity economy, brands no longer compete solely for attention. They compete for deeper relevance, and relevance creates something far more valuable than impressions. It creates meaning, value and trust, and that creates greater demand over the long term. Not transactional demand fueled by promotions, convenience, limited time offers and cost savings, but emotional demand rooted in trust, affinity, shared values, and genuine human connection.
That kind of demand is extraordinarily difficult for competitors to replicate. That creates the most coveted ROI that exists: emotional ROI.
If anyone doubts this transformation is underway, New York City provided one of the clearest demonstrations imaginable this summer. Over the course of just a few weeks, millions of people gathered for events. On the surface, they appeared to be separate gatherings with little in common: the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, the NYC Pride March, the New York Knicks’ championship celebration, and FIFA World Cup matches featuring countries from every corner of the globe. Viewed through a marketing leadership lens, however, they were expressions of the same powerful force: identity.
Puerto Ricans celebrated heritage, resilience, and cultural pride. LGBTQ+ communities celebrated visibility, equality, and belonging. Knicks fans rallied around a shared civic identity and lifelong fandom. World Cup supporters passionately embraced Ecuador, Panama, Germany, Senegal, France, England and other nations — not because they necessarily lived there, but because those teams represented family history, ancestry, culture, and identity.
The attendance and participation at these gatherings were not driven by discounts or promotional offers. They were driven by emotional ROI: the relevance and sense of belonging that cultural identity invariably creates. And while participants certainly donned their cultural swag, it was the emotional connection to culture and deep sense of belonging that drove their desire to be there. Proof that emotional relevance based on identity and insights compounds demand.
Consumers increasingly seek brands that reflect their values, understand their lifestyles, appreciate their communities, and recognize what matters most in their lives. When brands accomplish that, they don’t simply generate purchases. They create preference, trust, advocacy, and loyalty that extend well beyond the next transaction.
With more than 150 million Americans identify as multicultural – nearly half of the U.S. population – this represents one of the greatest opportunities facing marketing leaders today. No consumer segment demonstrates that opportunity more clearly than Hispanic consumers. Nearly 70 million Hispanics now call the United States home. Their economic output rivals many of the world’s largest economies. They are among America’s youngest consumers, fastest-growing entrepreneurs, first-time homebuyers, parents, professionals, creators, and business owners. Their influence extends across virtually every sector — from food, healthcare, and financial services to entertainment, sports, technology, fashion, and popular culture.
But their significance is no longer defined simply by population growth or purchasing power. It is defined by identity. From the eldest to the youngest, whether foreign-born to U.S.-born, Hispanics have a stronger connection to culture then ever before. And like other cultural groups, they live their culture, out loud and with great pride and enthusiasm.
For many Hispanic consumers, family, heritage, language, community, and culture are not demographic characteristics. They are foundational elements of personal identity that influence purchasing decisions, brand preferences, media consumption, and long-term loyalty.
Hispanic consumers are not the exception. They are the preview. They offer perhaps the clearest indication of where consumer behavior is heading as identity becomes increasingly central to purchase decisions across generations and communities.
That reality should fundamentally reshape how marketing leaders think about growth.
If identity increasingly creates demand, then cultural understanding cannot remain confined to advertising campaigns. It must shape product innovation. It should inform customer experience. It should influence service design. It should guide partnerships and sponsorships. It should strengthen retail experiences. It should help define how organizations create value.
Identity must become an enterprise capability — not simply a communications strategy.
Too many organizations continue to approach culture primarily through representation in advertising while product development, customer experience, innovation, and business strategy continue to reflect more conventional assumptions from a time that no longer exists.
Consumers recognize the difference. Authenticity cannot be added during the final creative review. It must be embedded from the product development stage and shape the entire customer journey and brand experience.
Which raises another leadership question: Who can help organizations build this capability?
As companies consolidate agency relationships and pursue greater operational efficiency, many increasingly rely on general market partners to lead complex Hispanic and multicultural assignments. General market agencies bring exceptional strategic and creative talent, but cultural fluency requires something fundamentally different. It cannot be achieved through translation, casting, or a handful of lived experiences that deliver a superficial “authenticity” of cultural fluency that connects with one’s identity.
Cultural fluency – or what we at DEX call cultural dexterity – is developed through years of dedicated research, continuous cultural immersion, deep community relationships, institutional knowledge, and specialized planning frameworks that reveal how identity influences consumer behavior. That capability is extraordinarily difficult to replicate. And that is precisely what makes it invaluable.
Performance marketing will always play an essential role because it captures the consumer demand that already exists. Marketing leadership, however, is responsible for creating future demand, and that requires building brands consumers trust before they begin shopping. It requires earning emotional relevance before asking for consideration. It requires understanding consumers and connecting with them more deeply than competitors do.
Every company can buy technology. Every company can optimize media. Every company can purchase data. Far fewer organizations possess genuine cultural fluency and dexterity. As identity becomes an increasingly powerful driver of consumer behavior, cultural fluency may become one of marketing’s most sustainable competitive advantages.
The identity economy isn’t a future trend. It is today’s marketplace.
The question facing today’s marketing leaders is no longer whether multicultural audiences deserve greater investment. It is whether their organizations are building the cultural fluency required to drive product innovation, customer experiences, brand strategies, communications and the specialized capabilities necessary to create the emotional relevance that drives enduring demand.
Because the companies that define the next decade won’t simply capture more attention. They will create stronger demand. And they’ll do it by understanding identity more deeply than anyone else.