Huemanitas to lead PepsiCo's multicultural retail, shopper marketing efforts

DENVER — PepsiCo has entered a partnership with an independent cultural marketing group that will allow the beverage company to develop relevant platforms that will target multicultural shoppers at retail.

PepsiCo has that Huemanitas will partner with PepsiCo's general market retail and shopper marketing agency of record, TracyLocke. PepsiCo senior director of cultural branding Javier Farfan noted that with Huemanitas working alongside TracyLocke will allow PepsiCo to close the gap with "multicultural shoppers along their path-to-purchase, to fully engage multicultural audiences at retail."

The goal of the partnership is "to deliver fully integrated, culturally relevant programming for the portfolio," Huemanitas partner and creative principal Marcus Jiménez said.

Gail Brooks, Huemanitas partner and principal of insights and strategy, said that engaging a multicultural consumer must go beyond a general approach.

"Engaging the multicultural consumer at retail requires a hyper-local strategy involving in-depth understanding of culture's impact on shopper, retailer, and channel dynamics," Brooks said. "It's not just about taking down national programs, but rather leveraging local market cultural intelligence to build platforms that can be scaled up and across markets as well."