With nearly 30 years of experience in multicultural advertising, Yuri Vargas knows a thing or two about transformation — both personal and industry-wide. Today, as Art Director at d’exposito & Partners, he reflects on how the agency has evolved in response to a shifting landscape, accelerated by the pandemic and the digital boom.

“Daisy and Jorge brought me to New York about 27 years ago,” Vargas recalls with a laugh. “And they still haven’t gotten rid of me.”

Post-pandemic reset

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a critical moment for the agency. Remote work reshaped daily operations, but also sparked a strategic reset.

“We decided to think about the future. We brought in younger talent, especially in account services — people more fluent in social media, with a digital-first mindset,” Vargas explains. “We also moved to a new office. That physical change helped reignite a collaborative culture — hearing people’s jokes, bouncing around spontaneous ideas. That’s where creativity thrives.”

Vargas reflects on a time when Hispanic advertising budgets were large, and TV was king. But that era is long gone.
“Clients realized they didn’t have to spend as much. Mainstream agencies started absorbing Hispanic budgets. So we had to adapt,” he says.

The agency leaned into more efficient, digitally driven strategies — but never lowered the creative bar. “Just because it’s for social media doesn’t mean it should be any less excellent. Craft matters. Photography, design, and execution — those details still count.”

For Vargas, cultural understanding remains the core differentiator of Hispanic-focused agencies — but it must go beyond surface-level representation.

“Hispanic advertising shouldn’t only reflect who we are now. It should project who we can become,” he says.

Faced with political and social uncertainty, the U.S. Hispanic community needs more than familiar tropes, he argues.
“There’s a lot of fear right now. I come from a creative school of thought in Colombia where advertising wasn’t just about selling — it was about teaching, elevating, and giving people something to aspire to.”

According to Vargas, many campaigns still fall into the trap of overexplaining “how Hispanics are different” — when in reality, the future lies in showing how they can thrive in the U.S. without losing their identity.

“We should be showing Hispanics how to live the American Dream — in our own way,” he says. “We’ve done it in some campaigns, but not enough. Especially in mainstream media.”

“The richness of the U.S. Hispanic experience isn’t just in our own countries of origin. It’s in how we absorb expressions from other Latin cultures, from African Americans, and from