Giving your executives greater visibility means intentionally building the public reputation of specific people within the company, rather than concentrating all communication around the brand.
In Latin America, there are growing reasons to do so. On one hand, people increasingly rely on channels where the identity and credibility of the person communicating influence how information is assessed. On the other, it can be a more efficient use of investment because it draws on resources and expertise that already exist within the organisation.
What you’ll find in this article:
- Why the rise of individual voices creates an opportunity to give executives greater visibility
- Why a named expert can build credibility that a corporate account may struggle to achieve on its own
- Why job title does not necessarily tell you who the market actually listens to
- Five criteria for identifying the right people before committing budget
- Five mistakes that can undermine the strategy before anything is published
In Latin America, who communicates can influence credibility
The way people access information in Latin America is changing. According to the OECD’s 2025 Trust Survey, 72% of people in Latin America and the Caribbean regularly use social media to get information about politics and current affairs. When assessing whether a news story is trustworthy, 43% look at who reported it and 40% at who shared it.
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 points in the same direction. Peru (46%), Mexico (39%) and Colombia (35%) lead Spanish-speaking markets in getting news through creators or influencers.
For international companies, this creates a clear opportunity. If audiences pay attention to who is behind the information, a recognisable expert voice can bring something that a corporate account may struggle to achieve on its own.
An executive who understands the market, speaks the local language and develops a distinctive point of view can build credibility over time. The company stops communicating only as a brand and starts participating in the conversation through people audiences can identify, follow and assess.
Executive visibility compounds while paid media starts again with every campaign
Paid media provides fast access to an audience someone else has already built. But that access ends when the campaign does. It can generate reach at a speed few other channels can match, although it rarely leaves behind an asset that continues working once the spend stops.
Content created by one of your company’s experts can continue generating value.
Imagine they publish every two weeks about how a regulation is being applied in practice. After reading several posts, a journalist covering the topic gets in touch. That coverage could support a future speaking opportunity, while someone who discovers the expert through the article may invite them to contribute a longer piece.
The same expertise can travel across several platforms and continue producing results beyond a single quarter. LinkedIn research from 2025 found that 82% of B2B buyers say creator content influences their decisions, while 67% say it helps them assess potential solutions.
The key is that the expertise becomes associated with a person. Every post, interview or public appearance leaves another trace that people can find later, rather than disappearing when a campaign ends.
There is also a risk to manage. A contact database remains with the company when an employee leaves, but the authority that person has built does not. That is why this strategy works better when visibility is distributed across several people, with different subjects and markets, rather than depending on a single figure.
Job title does not always tell you who can become a relevant voice
The obvious approach would be to open the organisation chart, choose the most senior people in the region and assign each one a market or topic. But seniority alone says little about who has the greatest potential to build a recognised voice outside the company.
Before choosing, look for signals that already exist.
Has this person been quoted by the media, invited onto a panel, approached by an industry association or asked to speak about their area of expertise without the communications team arranging it? That kind of track record can reveal who is already attracting interest outside the organisation.
From there, five criteria can help you make a more informed decision.
- An existing external presence. Search each name in Spanish, Portuguese and English. Look for bylined articles, media quotes, panel appearances, podcasts, associations or industry events.
- A clear subject they can own. A regulatory affairs director in Mexico may be an excellent voice on how regulation is changing, but that does not mean they should also speak about branding, strategy or every other issue. The clearer the relationship between person and subject, the easier it becomes to build recognition.
- Language and availability. Can they respond in Brazilian Portuguese or Mexican Spanish within a journalist’s timeframe? Someone with deep expertise who needs several days and a translator to respond may be difficult to activate in fast-moving conversations.
- Willingness, tested on a small scale first. Before building a full plan around someone, try a media comment, a post or a short interview. How they respond to that first deadline usually tells you a great deal about what will be possible later.
- Distance from the sales pitch. A strong external voice does not need to turn every appearance into a sales presentation. Being able to offer a useful perspective, even when it does not lead directly to a product or service, is part of what builds credibility.
What you need in the end is not a list of executives, but a map of people, subjects and markets.
| Person | Subject they can lead | Market | Working language |
| Regulatory affairs lead | How the regulator operates in practice | Mexico | Spanish |
| Payments specialist | Instant payment infrastructure | Brazil | Portuguese |
| Category lead | How the category behaves across the Andean region | Colombia, Peru, Chile | Spanish |
Three people talking about the same issue in Mexico do not make a spokesperson network. A group with complementary expertise, markets and languages does.
The channels you already use can work better with a person behind them
Giving your executives greater visibility does not mean building an entirely new channel strategy from scratch.
The corporate page, newsletter, events and media relations are still useful. What changes is how they are used.
A post from the company account reaches people who already follow the brand. The same idea shared by a specialist can also reach their own network, create different conversations and become a reference that a journalist can attribute to a specific person.
The same applies to a newsletter. A market update signed by the person who actually understands that market takes virtually the same effort as an unsigned corporate note, but creates a much clearer link between expertise and name.
The same principle applies to media relations. Pitching a company in the abstract can require considerable context. Offering a journalist someone who can explain a regulation in Portuguese today, with first-hand knowledge of the Brazilian market, makes the proposition much more concrete.
The objective is not to replace the company’s channels. It is to let the right people give them greater reach, context and credibility.
Most of these strategies fail because of fairly practical problems
Building visibility around an individual rarely fails because there is nothing to talk about. The problems usually appear much earlier.
- Approvals move more slowly than the conversation. If a journalist’s request needs to go through Legal, regional Marketing and global Brand, the response may arrive too late. Agree in advance what subjects each person can discuss and who has authority to approve quickly.
- Commitment is never tested. Someone may be enthusiastic in a meeting but later have no time to answer interviews, review posts or meet deadlines. A small test before building the full programme can save a great deal of work.
- Data obligations are not considered from the start. If the strategy includes contact databases, event registrations or conversion measurement, frameworks such as Brazil’s LGPD or Mexico’s data protection legislation need to be part of the planning from the beginning.
- Content is written in another language first and translated afterwards. A Portuguese post originally conceived and written in English will often retain that structure. If the person works and thinks about the subject in Portuguese, the interview and writing should begin in Portuguese too.
- Too much depends on one person. The authority built by an executive does not automatically transfer to the company when that person leaves. Spreading the strategy across several voices reduces that risk and makes the programme more sustainable.
How we choose who should represent a client in each market
In our media relations and expert positioning work for international clients across Latin America, we often see the same pattern: companies arrive with the spokesperson already chosen.
It is usually the most senior person, whoever has the most availability or simply the person who volunteered first.
We prefer to start with a different question: which conversations does the company need to be part of and in which markets?
Then we identify who within the organisation has the expertise, language, availability and credibility to occupy that space naturally.
That also changes how we measure results. We do not look only at how many posts someone has published. We look at whether people begin approaching them directly, whether journalists contact them without a pitch, whether they receive invitations to join relevant conversations and whether their name starts becoming consistently associated with particular topics.
In many cases, the company does not need to manufacture a new public figure from scratch.
It needs to identify the people who already have something valuable to say and give them a strategy that helps more people hear it.