Co-Founders Miguel de la Roca and Hugo Rodríguez Transform How International Companies Navigate Latin American Marketing Through Cultural Intelligence

After 17 years of partnership, Miguel de la Roca and Hugo Rodríguez have positioned Positive Agency as a solution to one of the most persistent challenges facing international brands: how to execute effective marketing in Latin America without falling into cultural shortcuts that undermine performance.

The co-founders, who met as students at the University of Lima, have built an agency that manages over $10 million in digital media investment and operates across Latin America, the United States, and Europe. They have worked with global brands such as Canon, Volvo Trucks, and Sodimac, along with regional leaders like Mercado Libre. The agency's work spans social media management, paid media optimization, digital analytics, and creative campaign development across multiple countries simultaneously.

Building Trust in a Growing Market

Latin America's digital advertising market reached USD 37.5 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.3% through 2030. Despite this growth, international companies continue to struggle with regional execution, often treating the market as monolithic when it comprises distinct cultures, consumer behaviors, and regulatory environments across countries.

"The question we hear most from U.S. and European companies is basically 'who can we trust?'" says Miguel de la Roca, CEO of Positive Agency. "Latin America represents significant opportunity, but the operational uncertainty stops many brands from committing resources. They need partners who understand both their global standards and the regional realities on the ground."

The challenge goes beyond just language. There are companies that succeed in Mexico and then struggle in Argentina or Chile, where consumer preferences, digital platform adoption, and even purchasing behaviors differ significantly.

Managing Complexity at Scale

One clear demonstration of the agency's capability is its long-term relationship with Canon, where Positive Agency manages social media strategy and execution across seven Latin American countries, including Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador. The work involves coordinating brand presence across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok while maintaining narrative consistency and adapting to local market needs.

Hugo Rodríguez, COO of Positive Agency, explains the operational challenge. "Managing a global brand across multiple LATAM countries isn't just translating the copy. Each market has different platform preferences, content consumption patterns, and cultural references. Our role is to maintain Canon's brand identity while ensuring the content feels native to each audience."

The scale of this work requires operational systems that can handle simultaneous campaign launches, country-specific creative adaptations, and unified performance reporting across markets with different currencies, time zones, and regulatory requirements.

Addressing Cultural Intelligence Gaps

Research on Hispanic marketing mistakes shows that brands frequently fail by treating Latin American audiences as a single demographic group, neglecting language preferences, or relying on stereotypes. These missteps result in campaigns that feel inauthentic and fail to generate meaningful engagement or business results.

Positive Agency's approach centers on what the founders call regional-first execution, where unified strategic frameworks are built to accommodate local adaptation without compromising brand identity. This model has proven effective for technology companies, e-commerce platforms, and automotive brands seeking to scale operations across the region while maintaining performance accountability.

Cross-Border Operations and U.S. Expansion

For the past three years, Positive Agency has operated with established business entities in both Peru and Florida, allowing the firm to serve U.S. clients directly while maintaining operational bases across Latin America. The distributed team structure includes professionals in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, combining senior-level strategic thinking with on-the-ground market knowledge.

"We built this model to solve a specific problem," says de la Roca. "U.S. tech and innovation companies need high-quality creative execution and strategic thinking, but they also need efficiency. Our approach eliminates unnecessary overhead while maintaining global standards of quality and performance."

This dual-location structure has enabled the agency to work seamlessly with American clients who prefer to contract with U.S.-based entities while leveraging the cost advantages and cultural expertise of Latin American talent. The model represents a middle ground between fully offshore operations and expensive domestic agencies.

Platform Development for Regional Access

The agency just launched NegOcean, a platform designed to connect companies outside Latin America with vetted agencies and service providers across the region through a transparent bidding and collaboration model. The initiative reflects a broader belief that the future of cross-border marketing depends on clearer access, better matching, and more efficient collaboration between global brands and regional talent.

"There's a bigger challenge than individual client relationships," Rodríguez explains. "We see systemic friction in how international companies find and evaluate partners in Latin America. NegOcean aims to reduce that friction by creating transparent pathways and accountability structures that benefit both sides."

Long-Term Vision for Distributed Teams

Looking ahead, de la Roca and Rodríguez see their work as part of a broader industry shift toward culturally fluent, distributed creative teams that combine deep regional insight with international quality standards. Their goal is to demonstrate that optimal cost-to-value outcomes in marketing come from intelligent talent distribution rather than cost-cutting measures that sacrifice strategic depth or creative ambition.

"The best work happens when you combine the right expertise with the right market knowledge," de la Roca says. "For too long, agencies have been organized around geography or legacy structures. We believe the future belongs to teams built around capability, cultural intelligence, and performance discipline regardless of where they're physically located."

With operations spanning three continents and a client portfolio that includes both global corporations and fast-growing regional players, the two founders from Lima have spent nearly two decades proving that Latin American agencies can compete at the highest levels of international marketing when built on the right foundations.