Camelo Communication Selected as Agency of Record for Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Metro Orlando
May 31, 2026
"Most American marketers know what the Super Bowl can do for a brand. The World Cup is a different (and much larger) animal entirely. Six billion people are projected to watch globally, with 104 matches across 16 cities in three countries (Adweek). For comparison, this year's Super Bowl reached around 128 million viewers in a single afternoon. The World Cup will hold attention for nearly six weeks, across dozens of languages, in markets where a single match decides whether a family takes the day off work."
Whether you call it soccer or fútbol, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is officially here — and for the next month or so, the United States, Mexico, and Canada are sharing the largest cultural moment any of us will see this decade.
Most American marketers know what the Super Bowl can do for a brand. The World Cup is a different (and much larger) animal entirely. Six billion people are projected to watch globally, with 104 matches across 16 cities in three countries (Adweek). For comparison, this year's Super Bowl reached around 128 million viewers in a single afternoon. The World Cup will hold attention for nearly six weeks, across dozens of languages, in markets where a single match decides whether a family takes the day off work.
And the audience watching it in the U.S. is not the audience watching the Super Bowl.
A younger, more diverse, more bilingual fan
Numerator's pre-tournament study shows 40% of Gen Z and 39% of Millennials planning to watch, well ahead of Gen X (32%) and Boomers (24%). Hispanic Americans lead all groups at 54% intent to watch. The next group might surprise you: Asian Americans at 51%. Both are the only demographic groups where more than half of the population plans to tune in (Numerator).
Zoom out and the picture gets clearer. Nielsen data cited across the industry shows 76% of U.S. soccer fans are Millennials or Gen Z. These are the most culturally diverse population segments in American history (The Gutenberg). This is an audience that speaks multiple languages and often switches between two of them in the same text thread.
Three ways brands are showing up
Watching the campaigns roll out since January, the work falls into three pretty distinct tiers. The tier tells you something about how the brand thinks about the audience.
Tier 1: Translate-and-cast
Most common, lowest effort. Take the global English campaign, recast it with Spanish-speaking talent, swap the voiceover, run it on Telemundo.
Coca-Cola's "Get Ready" campaign is the textbook example. The brand released an English spot and a Spanish counterpart titled "Copa Mundial de la FIFA 26: prepárate" two days apart in January. The Spanish version is well-produced and well-cast. McDonald's is in the same lane with a translated Argentina Superfans spot running on Telemundo.
This is good work. It just isn't true multicultural marketing — it's English marketing with a Spanish broadcast plan.
Tier 2: Bilingual by design
These campaigns recognize that their audience lives in two languages at once and often prefers to watch matches in Spanish that is much more exciting and louder than watching in English telecasts.
Adidas's flagship World Cup film is called "La Preparación Americana" — "The American Preparation" — distributed globally in English. The Spanish title isn't an accommodation. It's the title. The film stars Messi, Lamine Yamal, Florian Wirtz, Trinity Rodman, and Edson Álvarez, and deliberately blends American settings (Manhattan newsstand, Western saloon, bowling alley) with Mexican icons (luchadores, a Mexico City finale). The thesis: "American" in 2026 is tri-national and multi-lingual by definition. The Spanish title carries that thesis without explaining it.
Telemundo and Peacock did something similar in their Super Bowl spot. Owen Wilson plays a soccer fan who decides to learn Spanish so he can watch the World Cup in its primary U.S. broadcast language. Sofía Vergara teaches him. Soundtrack: Bad Bunny's "DtMF." The spot aired right after the Bad Bunny halftime show (Adweek). The bet is that the bilingual experience is the feature, not the target.
The Spanish isn't a translation. It's the design.
Tier 3: Native to the audience
Other effective work in this tournament comes from brands that build for a specific cultural community first and let the rest of the audience opt in.
Modelo's "Best Seat in the House" is the brand's largest fútbol media investment ever, with spots running during all 104 Spanish-language matches on Telemundo and pregame sponsorship across the network. Modelo isn't translating an English campaign — the campaign is Spanish-first, fútbol-first, Mexican-American-first. That authenticity is exactly why English-language audiences buy more of the beer.
Sabritas, Frito-Lay's Mexican snack brand, ran "Sin Sabritas no hay partido" — "Without Sabritas, there is no game." Adweek's coverage flagged it as creative U.S. brands keep missing, and they're right. The line is funny, idiomatic, and doesn't translate cleanly into English. That's the point. It was built for the audience that hears it, not for the audience that needs a subtitle.
Telemundo's own platform — "El Mundial Es Nuestro" / "The World Cup Is Ours" — is the same idea at network scale. The network declared today, June 11, "El Día Nacional del Fútbol," launched the campaign "Y Tú, ¿Con Quién Lo Vas a Ver?" ("Who Will You Watch It With?"), and is producing on-site at all 104 matches in Spanish across the three host countries (NBC Sports). For a large share of the U.S. audience, the Spanish broadcast is the main broadcast. The marketing reflects that.
What this means past the final whistle
The World Cup will end on July 19. The multicultural audience won't. In fact, it will only grow. The Hispanic, Asian, Gen Z, and bilingual households tuning in this summer are the same ones deciding which hospital to choose, which university to apply to, which nonprofit to give to, and which brand earns their loyalty for the next decade.
The brands and organizations winning this tournament are the ones that did the harder work upstream — building creative that holds up in multiple languages and cultural contexts from the brief stage. The ones doing the cheaper work downstream are still hoping a translation will close the gap.
Wilson Camelo is President and Chief Marketing Officer, a multicultural marketing agency working with mission-driven organizations across the United States. Camelo specializes in health systems, public agencies, social impact organizations, and brands build creative that is conceived for multiple audiences from the start..
