In the not-too-distant past, there was a time when brands thought they could cobble together the pieces of their audience in a spreadsheet. Age bracket, zip code, median income, race or ethnicity were right there, and marketing execs thought they could tick off the boxes and call it a day. Those were the Mad Men glory years of marketing math, when the “target” was as static as the billboard it was printed on. However, it’s 2025 now, and the world is a decidedly messy, fluid, and always-online place. Identities aren’t fixed; they’re layered, remixed, and constantly in motion.
If you’re a brand still selling to traditional demographic labels, you’re already speaking the wrong language.
This is where cultural fluency steps in to illuminate strategy; not as half-hearted use of your industry’s latest jargon, but as a crucial survival skill. It’s the ability to understand not only who your audience is on paper, but how they live, connect, and create meaning in the spaces between those lines. It’s knowing their inside jokes, the rituals they rely on, the platforms they trust, and the ways they reject the narratives that don’t serve them. In short, it’s knowing who they are.
Here’s the thing: the data is already warning us that the old way isn’t cutting it. In 2023, multicultural consumers—Hispanic, Asian, Black, and others– made up almost 40% of the U.S. population. Yet only 5.3% of media spending was aimed at them. That’s not a typo; that’s an entire marketplace left underfed and starved for recognition. At the same time, multicultural media spending increased to $34.6 billion, up 5.7% year-over-year, and is projected to rise 8.3% in 2024, driven by political campaigns and global events such as the Paris Olympics. Even with that growth, the investment still lags behind the weight of cultural reality.
Zoom in on Black America, and the opportunity becomes impossible to ignore. A recent 2025 report published in Forbes shows Black audiences are logging an average of 84 hours of media per week, compared to 72 for the total U.S. population. Thirty-two of those hours are spent on apps and websites, two more than the national average. YouTube alone accounts for 13% of their TV time, versus 10% for all Americans, and 44% say they’ve bought something because of YouTube content. We’re not talking about passive audiences here. These are active, trend-defining, purchase-making communities. And yet, most campaigns still treat them like a box to check, not a culture to connect and engage with.
Cultural fluency means committing to ditching the lazy shorthand. It’s the difference between “celebrating Hispanic heritage” with generic (and potentially offensive) maracas-and-taco imagery and understanding the micro-communities within Mexican-American Gen Z, where music, fashion, and political expression collide on TikTok. It’s knowing the difference between Caribbean-American and Southern Black beauty standards. It’s recognizing that a first-generation Korean-American gamer’s identity won’t be captured fully by a single “Asian” storyline in a commercial. Brands can get it right the first time by gaining valuable cultural insights through research, or wing it with tired ideas about audiences and get torn apart online.
Brands that do this well understand that representation is not about being superficially acknowledged once a year; it’s about being genuinely seen and understood every day. That means living inside the cultural conversation, not just peeking in and skimming the surface. It’s being in the WhatsApp group chats where Afro-Latino entrepreneurs swap resources, or showing up to livestreamed alté music shows from Lagos at 2 a.m. It’s paying attention to the slang, the humor, the cues that signal, “This brand gets us.” The brands that make diversity part of their DNA are the ones are have their ears to the ground and are in the spaces where they know what is happening with these audiences.
A good example of this is the Levi’s “501 Day” campaign in 2022. Instead of running a global ad with a single message, they went hyperlocal, staging events curated by emerging BIPOC DJs, artists, and designers in different cities. They didn’t just market jeans; they built cultural moments where the jeans were incidental.
What if a food brand leaned into sawsawan, the Filipino tradition of dipping sauces? Instead of slapping an “Asian-inspired” label on a mass-market bottle, they partnered with Filipino-American creators to explore the personal, social, and even competitive sides of how people mix and share these sauces. The campaign would not claim to have “introduced” sawsawan to the market; it instead elevated something the market already loved and owned. It would also center the creators and bring this tradition to an entirely new audience. Adding the Filipino-American creators to the mix provides a powerful, culturally fluent layer that a generic “Asian” label would miss by a mile.
Contrast that with the countless brands that slap a rainbow on their logo in June or roll out a single Lunar New Year ad without any year-round connection. That’s the difference between fluency and tokenism, and audiences can smell the difference before the first second of your ad finishes playing.
Cultural fluency isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a distinct competitive superpower. Brands leading in Black, Latinx, and AAPI engagement outpaced their industries by up to 60% in just two years. Campaigns where multicultural audiences were just not an afterthought but the core target generated 130% annual revenue growth compared to competitors. That’s not charity. That’s market leadership.
The Forbes report mentioned above found that Black buying power alone is projected to top $2 trillion by 2026. Add in the explosive growth of Hispanic and Asian-American spending power, and the question isn’t “Can we afford to focus on cultural fluency?” It’s “Can we afford not to?”
Here’s the uncomfortable truth that brands need to get on board with: cultural fluency isn’t something you can outsource to an agency once a quarter. You can’t parachute into Pride month or Hispanic Heritage Month and just expect to be embraced on the other days of the year. It’s not a calendar event, it’s a considered story, a practice, an all-hands commitment to showing up even when you’re not selling something. Maybe especially if you’re not selling something.
The new object of the game is being nimble enough to follow the culture when it shifts, because now, it’s inevitable that it will. What’s relevant in one corner of TikTok today will be replaced by something else in a week. Fluency means you don’t just chase the trend; you understand why it resonated, and you’re ready to join the next one without forcing your way in. It’s boots on the ground, ready to strike, and not being caught flatfooted.
It also means having the humility to listen before you speak. That’s harder than it sounds for brands used to leading the conversation during times when consumers weren’t following every word. But in this culturally-powered marketplace, the most powerful role you can play is engaged collaborator, not narrator.
Imagine a sneaker brand targeting South Asian Gen Z consumers. The lazy route to reaching this audience would be saffron-colored graphics on the ad, perhaps even a line about “tradition,” and calling it brilliant. The culturally fluent route? Partner with queer South Asian poets who blend Hindi and English in live performances, streaming to thousands. The sneaker isn’t the star; it’s part of the story. That’s what belonging looks like to millions of consumers.
Yes, demographics will always tell you who’s out there. But cultural fluency tells you what they care about, how they move, and why they’ll bring you along with them when they find something worth sharing. One is a map. The other is a passport. And in 2025, if you only have the map, you’re not getting past customs.
