This past summer, during the group stage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Telemundo and Peacock captured 48% of the combined U.S. audience across 72 matches. What may surprise people is that Telemundo's audience wasn't exclusively Spanish-speaking: Nielsen found that one in five of its World Cup viewers speaks English as their first language. In other words, some viewers were choosing Telemundo's Spanish-language broadcast for the experience, not because they preferred to watch and listen in Spanish.
Viewers pointed to the energy of the commentary, the emotion of the calls, and a broadcast that kept them connected to the action. They found an experience that resonated with them.
This points to something bigger about cultural relevance: visibility matters, but being seen and being understood are two different things.
The Axis Agency, a multicultural marketing firm, published a report in July arguing that audiences have stopped sitting inside the categories built for them. The same fan can cheer on Team USA and the country of their family's heritage in the same afternoon, without contradiction.
"Consumers don't experience or express culture so rigidly," said Carmen Lawrence, the Axis Agency's COO. "They move fluidly across identities, communities, and cultural experiences every day."
The report uses AI-synthesized personas informed by demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal data to explore these patterns. It's a signal that static segments can miss the complexity of how people actually live.
Seen Isn't Served
The difference between being represented and being understood matters to more than the audience experience. It can affect whether advertising actually works.
Research from the Cultural Inclusion Accelerator, which measures cultural relevance in advertising and media, offers another perspective. The organization reports more than two million evaluations across ads, shows, and movies, spanning seven audience segments. Its analysis finds that cultural relevance, combined with the persuasiveness it generates, accounts for 66% of campaigns' sales lift. That's the organization's finding, not a universal formula for every campaign.
The takeaway isn't simply about who appears on screen. It's about whether the work reflects something the viewer recognizes as their own. That requires understanding the audience before the creative work even begins.
A brand can cast perfectly and still score badly. The difference is whether the work reflects something true about the people it's trying to reach.
The People Already Telling You
So how do brands get beyond what they assume about their audiences and understand what actually matters to them? They can start by paying attention to what people are already saying.
Communities have been making their needs known for years, in the comments and replies to brands that aren't offering the products, experiences, or representation they're looking for. Those conversations aren't just feedback or sentiment data. They're people sharing what they value, what they're missing, and what they want to see change.
The rising majority has spent years being told to be visible. Visibility matters, but it isn't the same as being understood. And companies have gotten good at looking without necessarily learning.
The opportunity is to get close enough to hear what communities are telling you, bring them into the work, and let what they know shape research, strategy, and creative decisions.
Because the difference isn't just whether people see themselves in a brand. It's whether they have a hand in shaping what that brand becomes.
