There is a version of this audience that everyone recognises and nobody targets: the Brazilian who has lived in Florida for nine years, cooks the food they grew up with, follows creators back home, buys the brands they trust, and watches almost everything in Portuguese.
They are not a Hispanic audience. They are not an English-language audience either. They fall in the gap between two media plans, which is exactly why the gap is worth something.
Why this audience keeps getting missed
The miss is usually structural rather than deliberate. Media planning in the United States tends to split audiences into English-language and Spanish-language, and Portuguese speakers do not fit either bucket. So they get folded into a general Latino segment, served Spanish-language creative, and quietly ignore it.
- Spanish-language advertising does not read as being for them, because it is not.
- English-language advertising reaches them but does not signal that the brand understands them.
- The result is an audience with money and intent, and no campaign written for it.
What they actually buy
Two things, and they behave differently.
- 1
Products from home
Food, cosmetics, haircare, supplements, the specific brands that are hard to find abroad and worth paying a premium for. Purchase here is driven by recognition: the person needs to see that it is the same product they know, from someone who would know.
- 2
Products where they live
Everything else. Here the buying is ordinary American consumption, but the discovery still happens in Portuguese, through creators they already follow. The brand is local; the conversation is not.
That second case is the one most brands never think about. A US brand with no interest in Brazil at all may still have a meaningful Portuguese-speaking customer base at home, being reached by nobody in the language they scroll in.
The creators are already there
Brazilian creators living in the United States occupy a genuinely unusual position. They film in Portuguese, for an audience that is partly in Brazil and partly around them, and they can talk credibly about products on both sides.
- For a Brazilian brand exporting, they are proof that the product travels.
- For a US brand, they are a way into a domestic audience that Spanish-language creative does not reach.
- For the creator, it is two markets from one feed, which is rare and undervalued.
You do not need to be in Brazil to make content for Brazilians. You need to speak the way they do, and to be believable about the product in your hand.
How to actually work this
If you are a brand
0/4If you are a creator abroad
0/4Common questions
Yes, as long as you film in Portuguese. Everything happens through the app, so where you live does not change the work.
Some briefs specify a location or a setting. Many do not, and some specifically want a creator abroad.
If it has Portuguese-speaking customers, yes, and the only way to find out is to look. The audience is not large enough to be obvious and not small enough to ignore.
No, and treating it that way is the mistake this article is about. Different language, different references, different creators.
