Authenticity Trumps Optimization
February 17, 2026
Luis Caballero – VP Marketing Strategy and Analytics
- As a Hispanic, it felt like a triumph of Latino culture.
- As a marketer, it felt like the ultimate triumph of authenticity.
I have a lot of senior marketing leaders I admire, and I doubt many of them would have advised Benito ten years ago to maximize his audience by:
- Never singing in English
- Skipping touring in his biggest market
- Walking away from reggaetón to lean hard into traditional Puerto Rican music
On paper, none of that looks like “good strategy.”
He’s probably an outlier, and outliers are dangerous to over-learn from. But there is a lesson here—especially in the era of creators and influencers.
Too often, brands try to bend people into what fits our business priorities. And in doing so, we water down the very thing that made them compelling in the first place.
Authenticity can’t be optimized to scale. It scales because it resonates.
