What Hispanic Heritage Month Can Teach Global Communicators

Hispanic Heritage Month gives communicators a useful reason to examine how organizations speak to Hispanic-Latino audiences. It also raises a broader question that global communications teams face every day: How much of a message should remain consistent across markets, and where should local teams have authority to adapt it?

Spanish-language communications make that tension easy to see. A translation can be technically correct and still be wrong for the locale. The same word or phrase may carry a different meaning, level of formality or cultural connotation from one Spanish-speaking market to another. National identity, cultural references and media habits vary too.

I have seen versions of this challenge while supporting communications across roughly 60 markets. Localization is not primarily a translation exercise. At scale, it is an operating-model decision: what headquarters controls, where markets have authority, how local intelligence travels back into the organization, and how success is measured across different communications environments.

The same operating model matters during major organizational change – from restructuring or a new strategy to an enterprise technology rollout. Global teams need consistency around where the organization is going, while local teams need latitude to explain what that change means in-market.

Without that balance, headquarters can become an approval bottleneck while markets create their own workarounds.

Market labels can hide the audience.

Broad labels are useful for organizing teams and budgets, but they aren’t audience definitions.

In a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of U.S. Hispanic adults, 53% said the term they use most often to describe themselves includes their country or place of origin, either by itself or paired with “American.” Only 27% most often use a broader term such as Hispanic or Latino, alone or combined with “American.”

“Hispanic” can describe a large population while telling us little about how a specific group identifies or which messages will matter most. The same applies to global labels such as Latin America, Europe or Asia-Pacific.

Before localizing a campaign, communicators need to understand who is in the market, what issues are shaping the environment and how the organization is perceived there.

Define the boundaries before launch.

Effective localization depends as much on governance as it does on cultural fluency.

Not every message needs the same degree of central control. Earnings communications, crisis response, regulatory issues, and major corporate announcements may require tight global alignment. A local customer story, executive social post or market event may allow much more flexibility.

Global teams should define those boundaries before launch:

• What cannot change? Core facts, corporate positions, legal or regulatory language, financial information, and high-risk reputation messaging
• What can markets adapt? Local proof points, spokespeople, media strategy, examples, channels, and tone
• What requires escalation? Changes that could materially alter the meaning of the global position, introduce legal or reputational risk, or create a contradiction across markets

The categories will differ by organization, but clear decision rights make localization faster and reduce unnecessary approvals.

Make local teams part of your early-warning system.

Too often, headquarters finalizes campaigns and sends assets to markets to translate, distribute and report results. By then, many decisions affecting local relevance have already been made.

Involving representatives from markets in earlier can surface issues headquarters may not see. A phrase may carry a different political meaning. A proof point may not hold up under local media scrutiny. A routine announcement may intersect with a labor issue, regulatory debate or competitor story.

Local communications teams do more than adapt the story. They give leaders an early read on how a strategy, announcement, or change is landing in-market – and where resistance, confusion, or risk may emerge. That is valuable reputation intelligence.

Those teams often hear questions from reporters, employees and other stakeholders before the same signals become visible elsewhere. A strong global model gives that intelligence a path back to the center, where it can inform messaging, issues planning and – when necessary – the broader business response.

Localization extends beyond language.

The right spokesperson, media mix, channel strategy and proof points can all vary by market.

Nielsen reported last year that streaming accounted for 55.8% of total television time among U.S. Hispanic audiences, compared with 46% for the overall U.S. population. The point is not that every Hispanic campaign should prioritize streaming; rather, audience behavior should inform communications planning alongside language and cultural context.

One objective, different measures

A successful global campaign does not need to look the same in every market. One may earn strong media coverage, another drive executive engagement, and another strengthen employee understanding or stakeholder engagement.

What should remain consistent is the broader communications objective.

Global teams can unintentionally discourage localization when they expect every market to execute the same tactics and report the same metrics. 

Set the common outcome centrally, then allow markets to identify the measures that best demonstrate progress with their audiences and stakeholders. That preserves accountability without forcing unlike markets into the same scorecard.

Carry the lesson beyond Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic Heritage Month is an opportunity to recognize Hispanic-Latino employees, customers and communities. The broader lesson for global communicators is to build local relevance into the model year-round.

For your next global campaign, bring two or three priority markets into the process before materials are final. Ask what must remain consistent, what they should be empowered to adapt, what would trigger escalation, and what headquarters may be missing.

Then test whether intelligence flows back just as effectively.

If a local communicator spots an emerging reputation risk tomorrow, how quickly can that intelligence reach the people shaping the global response?

If the answer is unclear, the issue is bigger than translation. Revisit your operating model before the next campaign reaches the market.