The understated green and white box labeled Aspirina that started rolling out in select Walmart and Walgreens locations this summer may strike some Americans as an interesting novelty, a new addition to their pain-relief options. For many Hispanic consumers, however, that box represents a trusted brand long used by their parents and grandparents.
In Mexico, Aspirina has a 99% awareness rate, and some 67% of consumers report using it regularly, Bayer said in the August announcement of the med’s stateside launch. The decision to bring Aspirina north of the border marked an attempt to reach a growing demographic that healthcare and pharma companies sometimes engage with enthusiastically—but also often neglect.
Hispanic consumers are an enormous segment of the U.S. market: Nearly 20% of the population identifies as Hispanic, and that number is projected to grow to 28% by 2060. The GDP of the U.S. Latino population has been estimated at $3.6 trillion. If this group were an independent nation, it would represent the fifth-largest economy in the world, just behind Germany and ahead of India, according to a recent report from the Hispanic Marketing Council (HMC).
When it comes to spending on Spanish-language marketing, GSK and Johnson & Johnson stand out as the only two pharmas among the HMC report’s list of the top 25 Spanish-language advertisers. GSK was found to have committed around $85 million to Spanish ads, representing just over 19% of its total advertising spending, while J&J shelled out nearly $80 million, representing about 16% of its total ad allotment.
J&J’s marketing efforts for immunology heavyweight Tremfya in particular illustrate the company’s concern with ensuring that Hispanic consumers are represented in advertising. Drug ad spending data shared with Fierce Pharma Marketing by iSpot.TV showed that Tremfya’s top TV network by ad spend for the third quarter of 2025 was Univision, where it boasts an almost 15% share of voice. Tremfya was the only brand of the quarter’s top 10 TV ad spenders to name the Spanish-language network as its top network.
ViiV Healthcare, the HIV-focused drugmaker majority-owned by GSK, has a longstanding commitment to reaching Hispanic consumers in a variety of formats. For one, Randevyn Pierre, ViiV’s head of U.S. external affairs, pointed to the six-episode “Love in Gravity” podcast featuring original stories from gay and queer Latinx and Afro-Latinx writers.
The series offered an opportunity “to reduce stigma around both HIV prevention and the LGBTQ+ experience,” Pierre said in an interview with Fierce, adding that it “provided a way to reach audiences who weren’t necessarily interested in talking about HIV but could relate to many of the stories that were told in that podcast. It was an effective tool to reach communities where they are and where they wanted to be met.”
“Our work is all about making sure that no person with HIV is left behind,” Pierre continued. “In order to do that, it’s important that people see themselves in the messaging around HIV prevention and treatment. For people to see themselves in the work, you have to understand how to message through culture.”
Family matters
Along with “Love in Gravity,” Pierre cited another initiative that resonated with Hispanic consumers: “Mother to Son,” which explored the relationships between Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ men and their mothers and other maternal figures.
“Family is a place where we can connect to a lot of audiences, and particularly this audience,” he said. “Conversations about how mothers support their sons are really resonant in the Latinx community.”
Family also plays a key role in recent Spanish-language spots for Exact Sciences’ Cologuard. Last year’s “Stairway” was the first Spanish-language TV commercial for the at-home colon cancer screening test and features a man picking up his Cologuard box after climbing a staircase lined with family photos.
Meanwhile, the setting for “Te Toca,” Cologuard’s latest Spanish-language ad, is a 45th birthday party crowded with friends, family and the Cologuard mascot all singing the traditional Mexican birthday song, “Las Mañanitas.”
“What we learned very quickly, and it may be intuitive, is that for the Hispanic audience, their lived experiences around family and being able to protect what they’ve spent so much time and effort building and protecting—their own health—so that they can be around for those that they love are uniquely resonant,” Jeremy Truxal, Exact’s vice president of marketing, said in an interview.
That concept is backed up by numbers. In 2022, the Pew Research Center reported that 26% of Hispanic households were multigenerational, double the percentage among non-Hispanic white Americans. And other research indicates that Hispanic consumers are more likely to turn to uncles, aunts and cousins for medical advice.
“While [non-Hispanic Americans] may go to their immediate family members for help making healthcare decisions, the extended family isn’t necessarily included in those conversations,” said Marina Filippelli, CEO of Orci, an independent, Hispanic-first marketing agency.
Adriana Lopez, senior VP of digital and cultural communications co-lead at GCI Health, suggested that because of that emphasis on family, mainstream healthcare communications are often not effective in reaching Hispanic audiences.
“In healthcare specifically, there’s so much focus on treating the patient as an individual. This is absolutely rooted in the right sentiment, but when it comes to Hispanic audiences, we need to understand that patients are part of a collective and want to be seen as such,” Lopez said in an interview.
That’s why family “is always such a powerful theme for this community,” she continued, explaining, “When someone goes to the doctor, it’s not just one person in the doctor’s office. If they’re aging parents, the eldest daughter will be there. If it’s a millennial child, they’re still bringing their parents or an aunt to the appointment. The experience of receiving healthcare is a shared one for Hispanic audiences; their families want to be heard and accounted for in healthcare settings and when making health decisions.”
Meeting audiences where they are
Cologuard and Aspirina are very different products, but they both reflect another truth about the Hispanic market: Many Hispanic Americans face challenges accessing healthcare, which can make an at-home colon cancer test or an over-the-counter analgesic especially appealing.
Hispanic Americans remain uninsured at higher rates than other racial and ethnic groups, though that number declined from 33% in 2010 to 20% in 2019, in large part because of the Affordable Care Act.
Other challenges remain, however, with Hispanic adults almost evenly divided between those who say the process of getting medical care at hospitals and medical centers is “very” or “somewhat” hard (49%) and those who describe it as “very” or “somewhat” easy (50%), according to a 2022 Pew survey, which also found that roughly one-third of respondents would prefer a Spanish-speaking doctor.
“It’s important for this demographic to have OTC options. We know that accessing healthcare is challenging for some, making self-care important,” said Natalia Serrano, M.D., global business lead for Bayer’s Aspirin franchise. “Aspirina is really an all-in-one, providing fast and effective relief for multiple types of pain.”
The Hispanic audience also engages with marketing channels in distinct ways. Radio remains a key means of reaching Latinos of every generation, per the HMC report. TV-wise, Hispanic viewers turn to streaming services more often than the general U.S. population and less frequently to cable, statistics that hold true among both English- and Spanish-dominant Latino audiences.
Looking beyond language
Creating Spanish-language versions of websites and other marketing materials is often a first step for marketers trying to reach Hispanic consumers, but Lopez of GCI Health noted that it should be just that: a starting point.
“Translation is just the tip of the iceberg. Content needs to be accurately trans-created, which requires digging into and infusing cultural nuances into that content in a deeper way,” she said.
GCI, for one, has a “Cultural Impact Scale” it uses to score content on how culturally relevant it is.
“We look at a set of criteria—from language choices to cultural connection points related to family and traditions—to evaluate opportunities to make the content more resonant,” Lopez said. “That’s what’s missing right now in a lot of websites and content that are simply available in Spanish.”
While language remains the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the Hispanic audience, the role of Spanish is changing. In 1980, some 59% of Hispanic Americans reported speaking English proficiently. By 2019, that number had jumped to 72%, according to Pew Research Center.
Indeed, a majority of Hispanic American households now report that they either speak only English at home (26%) or speak English more often than Spanish (29%).
Spanish remains a key cultural indicator, however, even for consumers who are comfortable navigating content in English.
“There’s this question around language and its importance. When the majority of Hispanics don’t have any problems understanding English, what is the role of Spanish?” Orci’s Filippelli mused. “What we’ve seen is that while you might think younger populations don’t care because they all speak English—they grew up here, and they went to school here—they still prefer it in some cases.”
“Back in the day, the thought was that you have got to go all-in on Spanish because they need it, and they only speak Spanish. You’ve got to land on a Spanish-language website, and the whole process needs to be in Spanish,” she continued. “Now. there’s more nuance, because it’s not necessarily always a need.”
One insight that came up repeatedly from the sources interviewed for this article was that attempts to reach Hispanic audiences require a sustained commitment; the occasional one-off campaign or a perfunctory nod during Hispanic Heritage Month is not enough.
In 2024, the HMC’s “Stop Latino Coating” campaign addressed these inadequate attempts to speak to Hispanic consumers.
“[The campaign] was about those token efforts: ‘We threw up a Spanish webpage, we created a straight translation of our general market spot, or we threw a Mexican guy into an ad. Look at us! We’re reaching the Hispanic market,’” said Jose Villa, chairman of the HMC and president and chief strategy officer of Sensis, an integrated cultural marketing agency.
“We call that Latino-coating. It’s superficial, it’s not culturally attuned, and it’s not going to work,” he added.
Many marketers run up against the pressure to produce quick results, but, as Exact’s Truxal noted, “Any time you are communicating to a new audience, you’re educating, but you’re also trying to change very entrenched behavior.”
“That takes time and that takes commitment. It takes repetition and patience. It can be challenging. Brands often try, and then when they don’t see instant success, they walk away,” he said. “I’d encourage them to instead spend more time with their customers and get to the heart of what’s working and what’s not. We’re living in a very dynamic environment, and it’s essential that we not be afraid to pivot.”