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Multicultural and Inclusive Marketing Excellence Awards Grand Jury
Chief Marketing and Brand Officer
Northgate Gonzalez Markets
BIO
Marina Filippelli is the Chief Marketing and Brand Officer of Northgate Gonzalez Markets, and formerly the CEO of Orci, one of the nation's leading independently owned multicultural agencies. With over 25 years of experience in brand strategy and multicultural marketing, she has built a career at the intersection of cultural intelligence and business growth, serving Fortune 500 clients across automotive, CPG, financial services, entertainment, and retail.
Under her leadership, Orci has grown its relevance and new business pipeline, serving marquee clients including Honda, Acura, Dole, Farmers Insurance, Chevron, Stella Artois, Kaiser Permanente, and Northgate Gonzalez Markets. One of few Latina women to hold a CEO title at a major U.S. creative agency, Marina is a recognized advocate for gender equity and intersectional marketing strategy.
With cultural roots in Mexico and Argentina, she brings authentic firsthand perspective to the brands she helps grow. Her insights have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Ad Age, Adweek, and Forbes, and she has spoken at SXSW, Cannes, Advertising Week, and the ANA. She serves on the boards of the Hispanic Marketing Council and P.S. ARTS, and holds a B.A. in International Studies from the University of Miami.
Q&A with Marina Filippelli
What makes great marketing today?
Great marketing earns its place in someone’s life. It doesn’t interrupt, it belongs. Consumers, are more discerning than ever about which brands actually see them versus which ones are just going through the motions. The work has to carry real weight. It needs to be specific enough to feel personal, honest enough to build trust, and sharp enough to move business. Those things aren’t in tension. They’re the same thing done well. I spent 25 years making that case for clients on the agency side. Now I’m on the brand side proving it from the inside, and the standard doesn’t change. The stakes just get more visible.
What is the one cultural trend you are watching today?
Trust erosion, and how brands respond to it. ThinkNow research published earlier this year found that more than half of Hispanic consumers are actively changing where they shop based on how brands are showing up right now. That’s not just a sentiment shift, that’s a behavior shift. Hispanic consumers are watching whether companies they’ve supported are showing up with consistency, not just in the marketing, but in hiring, in sourcing, in what they say when it’s uncomfortable to say anything at all. The brands that understand this will build something durable.
In one sentence, what will it take to make an entry worthy of winning a Grand Prize award?
Show me work that could only have come from a deep, genuine understanding of this community and that actually drove the business forward.
What advice would you offer to teams preparing submissions for the ANA Multicultural and Inclusive Marketing Excellence Awards?
Don’t just tell me what you did. Tell me why it mattered to the people it was made for. The best submissions don’t lead with production value or media spend. They lead with insight, a specific human truth that only surfaces when you’re paying real attention to a real community. Then show how that insight drove every decision, all the way through to results. Be honest about the metrics that mattered and why, not just the ones that look good. If the campaign moved the needle commercially and culturally, show both. Judges can tell the difference between a brand that got lucky and a team that knew exactly what they were doing. Bring receipts.
Why do awards programs like the ANA Multicultural and Inclusive Marketing Excellence Awards matter to the health and progress of the marketing industry?
Because recognition shapes behavior, and this industry still needs the reminder that multicultural marketing isn’t a subset of the discipline. It’s the future of it. When the best culturally driven work gets celebrated at this level, it raises the bar for what brands expect from their teams and agencies, and it gives those teams the internal proof points they need to push for bolder work next time. It also signals to the next generation of multicultural talent, the strategists, creatives, and researchers redefining this space, that their work is seen and valued.
When reviewing submissions, what signals tell you that a program is driving real, sustainable business growth?
The shift from awareness metrics to behavior metrics. Reach and impressions tell me you spent money. Purchase intent, trial lift, retention, market share movement, those tell me the work actually did something. I’m also looking for signs that the brand built something, not just ran something. Did consumer perception shift? Did trust scores move within this community? Did the campaign create a platform or a relationship the brand can keep building on? I’m asking these questions now from a brand-side seat for the first time in my career and the lens is sharper than it’s ever been.
How have your expectations of great marketing evolved over the past few years, and how does that shape how you approach marketing?
Brands can’t just say they value community and expect that to land. They have to demonstrate it through decisions, in their supply chain, their vendor relationships, their internal teams, their communications when the moment is hard. I’ve also grown less patient with work that checks the multicultural box without any real cultural specificity. And I’ll say the quiet part out loud: “authenticity” has become one of the most overused words in this industry, to the point where it means almost nothing anymore. What I actually want to know is, what is specific? What is true? What makes this unmistakably for this person? And again, how do choosing to double down on those specificities drive success.
What distinguishes exceptional multicultural and inclusive marketing work from work that is simply “good”?
Specificity. Good multicultural work gets the broad strokes right, the language, the representation, the occasion. Exceptional work gets the subtext right. It understands that the Hispanic community is not monolithic, that generational identity, country of origin, acculturation level, and intersecting identities all shape how a message lands. The diversity within the diversity is where most brands still leave value on the table. Exceptional work also tends to come from teams and agencies where the community isn’t just the audience, it’s part of the full process. When that’s missing internally, it usually shows up in the work, even if subtly. The best entries will have an insight that’s earned, not assumed.
How do you balance creative ambition with commercial accountability in marketing?
They’re not opposites, and I’d push back on any framing that treats them that way. The most commercially effective work I’ve been part of over 25 years was also the most ambitious creatively. The reason is pretty simple. Safe work doesn’t earn attention, and work that doesn’t earn attention doesn’t earn business. What I’ve learned is to make sure the ambition is grounded, that the creative leap connects directly to a real human insight, and that we’ve defined what success looks like before the work goes out the door. Accountability isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s actually what gives creative teams the confidence to take risks, because they know what they’re optimizing for. Where I’ve seen it break down is when accountability gets defined too narrowly, when the only metric that matters is the immediate one. The best work builds equity over time, and you have to fight to keep that in the conversation.
Get to know the 2026 Multicultural and Inclusive Marketing Excellence Awards Grand Jurors.