On July 17, 2026, Newsweek published a profile of Jorge Perez, founder of JP Director and On Point Productions, centered on a simple idea that is rarely put into practice: translating into Spanish is not the same as understanding Hispanic consumers, and artificial intelligence amplifies that difference rather than eliminating it. You can read the full Newsweek profile, titled AI and Cultural Insight Are Changing Marketing.
This article does not repeat that profile. Instead, it uses it as a starting point to answer the question a reader is likely to have after reading it: in practice, what does marketing with cultural intelligence actually mean, and how can it truly be combined with artificial intelligence in a real-world strategy?
What Does the Newsweek Profile Say About Jorge Perez and JP Director?
The Newsweek profile presents Jorge Perez as someone who built his career at the intersection of two transformations: the growth of the Hispanic market in the United States and the arrival of artificial intelligence in marketing. Perez came to the United States from Venezuela with limited English and without an established professional network, and built his career by identifying opportunities that other companies were overlooking among Hispanic consumers.
That journey led to the creation of JP Director and On Point Productions Agency, the agency founded by Perez that, according to the profile, has generated more than $220 million in revenue for its clients. The central focus of his work, as described by Newsweek, has been helping companies understand Hispanic and Spanish-speaking consumers in the United States beyond literal translation. In Perez’s words, quoted in the article, “language is only the surface.”
The profile also previews an ongoing project: a book titled The Future of Advertisement with AI, in which Perez aims to provide entrepreneurs with a practical system for combining emerging technology with a deep understanding of their audience, applicable beyond the Hispanic market.
What Does “Cultural Intelligence” Mean in Marketing Beyond Translating Into Spanish?
Cultural intelligence in marketing means designing the message from the audience’s perspective rather than simply translating the words of a message created for another audience. A translated campaign preserves the literal meaning, but it may also preserve the references, humor, rhythm, and priorities of the original culture—and that is precisely what can make it feel foreign.
In practice, this difference appears in concrete decisions every day. Humor does not travel equally between cultures: a joke that works in English can sound flat or even confusing in Spanish if it is translated word for word instead of recreated. Family references change as well: marketing aimed at Hispanic consumers in the United States often performs better when it acknowledges extended family and shared purchasing decisions rather than assuming the isolated individual who dominates much of English-language marketing. Timing matters too: treating Hispanic culture as a one-month-a-year topic rather than an audience that exists year-round is another way of reducing culture to translation.
This section stands on its own because it describes a problem any marketing team can recognize without having read the rest of the article: most campaigns fail in the Hispanic market not because of a language error, but because of a perspective error. The text is well translated; the strategy behind it was never designed for that audience.
Why Does the Hispanic Market in the United States Matter Right Now?
The Hispanic market in the United States matters right now because its economic size is no longer a future projection but a current reality that many marketing strategies still do not reflect. The U.S. Latino GDP report, produced by the Latino Donor Collaborative together with researchers from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, calculated that the U.S. Latino economy reached $3.6 trillion in 2022. If that economy were an independent country, it would rank among the largest economies in the world.
This is accompanied by a broader figure cited in the Newsweek profile: 88% of organizations already report using artificial intelligence in at least one business function, although many remain in the early stages of scaling adoption. The two trends connect directly: companies that learn to apply AI with cultural intelligence, rather than treating it as a culturally neutral tool, have an opportunity to gain an advantage over companies that are only beginning to experiment with both independently.
For a company that is already successful communicating in English, the opportunity is not to replace that strategy, but to add a second layer aimed at an audience that continues to grow each year and that, for the most part, is still receiving messages originally designed for someone else.
How Do Artificial Intelligence and Cultural Intelligence Work Together in Practice?
Artificial intelligence and cultural intelligence work together when AI is used to scale a culturally calibrated strategy rather than to scale a generic message faster. That distinction is what separates effective uses of AI in marketing from simply producing more content without producing better results.
Two concrete applications illustrate this. AI avatars and automated content systems allow a single person or a small team to maintain a consistent presence across multiple platforms, something that previously required a full production team. But an AI avatar or automated content workflow that has not been culturally calibrated simply produces, at a higher speed, the same literal-translation error described above. AI does not correct a perspective problem; it repeats it at scale.
That is why the order of decisions matters in practice. First, define the cultural strategy, tone, references, and formats that genuinely connect with the Hispanic or bicultural audience you are targeting. Only then should AI tools—content generation, avatars, publishing automation—be used to execute that strategy at a volume and speed that previously required a much larger team. At JP Director, we apply this same sequence with our clients: cultural intelligence defines the message, and artificial intelligence multiplies its reach, never the other way around.
What Can Your Company Do With This Today?
Today, you can audit whether your Spanish-language content is simply a translation of your English content or a strategy designed from the ground up for your Hispanic audience. That simple diagnosis often reveals more than any other starting point. If every piece of Spanish content has an equivalent English piece with the same structure, the same joke, and the same references, that is a sign that you are translating rather than communicating.
From there, three concrete steps: First, involve native and bicultural speakers during the strategy stage, not just during final translation, so decisions about tone and cultural references are made from the beginning. Second, if you are going to use AI to generate or automate content, define the cultural guidelines for the message first—voice, family values, visual references—and feed them into the tool rather than generating content in English and translating it afterward. Third, measure Hispanic content performance separately rather than treating it as a subset of your English content, because the metrics that indicate success can differ between the two audiences.
If you want to go deeper into how to structure this strategy from the beginning, we have already covered the fundamentals of what a digital marketing agency should do in 2026, as well as the elements that make a campaign genuinely profitable , beyond the volume of content produced.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who Is Jorge Perez and What Is JP Director?
Jorge Perez is a marketing strategist originally from Venezuela and the founder of JP Director and On Point Productions Agency, which, according to Newsweek, has generated more than $220 million in revenue for its clients. His work focuses on helping companies connect with Hispanic and bicultural audiences in the United States through cultural intelligence, and more recently on effectively integrating artificial intelligence into that strategy. He was profiled by Newsweek on July 17, 2026.
What Is the Difference Between Translating Marketing Content and Adapting It Culturally?
Translating content means converting words from one language to another while preserving the literal meaning. Cultural adaptation means redesigning the message, humor, references, and overall approach around the logic of the target audience, even if that means completely changing the original structure. A well-translated message can still feel foreign. A culturally adapted message feels as though it was created specifically for that audience from the beginning.
How Large Is the Hispanic Market in the United States?
According to the U.S. Latino GDP report from the Latino Donor Collaborative and the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, the U.S. Latino economy reached $3.6 trillion in 2022. It is a market with sustained growth and increasing purchasing power that many marketing strategies still treat as a secondary audience rather than a central economic force.
Where Can I Read Jorge Perez’s Full Newsweek Profile?
The full profile, titled AI and Cultural Insight Are Changing Marketing, is published in Newsweek and can be read directly on newsweek.com. It covers Perez’s journey from Venezuela to founding JP Director and On Point Productions Agency, his approach to cultural intelligence in Hispanic marketing, and his perspective on using artificial intelligence to help small businesses and entrepreneurs grow.
