When Bad Bunny’s Half Time Show Doesn’t Feel Like “For You” But Having Arnold As Your “Neighbaaa” Does, And What It Means for Advertising

By Edwige Winans – Multicultural Insights

When Bad Bunny lit up the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show, the performance was vibrant, proud, and deeply rooted in Latin Caribbean culture. It reminded me of moments I’d experienced in San Juan (the music, the energy, the homes, the colors), but I still didn’t feel fully connected. It felt like watching someone else’s cultural celebration, impressive, but not mine.

That moment reminded me how advertising works.

We talk a lot about “inclusive” ads, but inclusion isn’t just about representation. It’s also about cultural familiarity, whether the story feels like something from your own world.

Culture Shapes Connection

To understand why this matters, it helps to name what we mean by culture.

Culture is the shared system of values, norms, language, humor, beliefs, lived experiences, and everyday behaviors that shape how people interpret meaning and recognize themselves in stories. In advertising, it determines what feels familiar, what feels foreign, and what feels “for me.”

People respond not just to what they see, but to what they recognize: A familiar joke, a linguistic quirk, a reference that feels like home, a situation you’ve lived a hundred times.

When those elements align, we lean in. When they don’t, we may still appreciate the craft, but the emotional spark is weaker.

The Ad That Proved It for Me

As a French person who has lived in the U.S. for years, I’ve learned how powerful that sense of recognition is. When it’s missing, even the biggest, flashiest content can feel distant. When it’s there, the connection is instant.

In 2024, a Super Bowl ad showed Arnold Schwarzenegger struggling to pronounce “neighbor” (which he pronounced “neighbaaa”) with Ugo Chukwu, directing the spot, correcting him. The whole joke hinged on a small linguistic mismatch.

I smiled because it felt like my life. There are English words I always mispronounce, and my family constantly teases me about them. That ad felt like it had peeked into my home. I still remember the moment, and the brand, years later

That’s cultural relevance. It doesn’t just entertain; it sticks.

Culture Is Never Neutral

Culture often feels neutral when it’s your own, which is precisely why it becomes invisible to the people creating the work.

One of the misconceptions in American marketing is that ads can be produced void of cultural context, and therefore apply to everyone. In reality, culture is the default operating system. When not intentional, the default culture in an ad becomes that of the people who build them, from strategy to executions. As a result, the people who connect most deeply with those ads tend to be the people who share that cultural background.

Many marketers only notice this when a campaign travels. An ad that feels warm, funny, or obvious in one country can feel confusing, or even offensive, somewhere else, not because the idea changed, but because the cultural context did.

Why Culturally Grounded Ads Win

The strongest ads aren’t just well‑produced, they’re rooted in a cultural lens that feels authentic to the people they’re trying to reach. When an ad reflects your world, it speaks to you, not at you. When it doesn’t, it can feel like you’re listening in on someone else’s conversation.

This doesn’t mean ads must be narrow or exclusive. It means being intentional about the cultural perspective you’re using and honest about who will connect most deeply with it.

The U.S. Isn’t One Culture. It’s Many

The U.S. is a patchwork of cultures and subcultures. And every ad, no matter how “general”, is speaking from some cultural vantage point, intentionally or not.

Understanding this is understanding a key pillar of inclusive marketing. If culture is always present, then the only real question is: whose culture is shaping the work, and who feels seen or unseen because of it?

The Real Challenge for Advertisers

Broad appeal doesn’t come from flattening culture. That is impossible. It comes from multiplying ways to connect through humor, nostalgia, music, casting, context, language, lived experiences, so different groups see something that feels like theirs.

This can be done at a large scale through campaigns tailored to different cultural segments. It can also happen at a smaller scale via intentional and strategic selection of influencers, thinking through digital assets designed for different groups, or by intentionally infusing mainstream ads with subtle cultural signals.

The Takeaway

Culture isn’t a niche consideration. It’s the foundation of how people interpret meaning. In a country as diverse as the U.S., that truth becomes even more important. When advertisers embrace the idea that culture is always present, their work becomes sharper, more relevant, and more memorable. When they ignore it, even the biggest stages and budgets can feel like that halftime show did for me: impressive, entertaining… but not truly for me. Because in the end, culture is the reason the biggest stage in the country can still feel like someone else’s celebration while a simple mispronunciation can feel like home.