Introduction

Throughout Latin America brands are rising in value and importance.

High-value brands are present across most categories. Some are government owned or controlled, as often is the case in fast growing markets. Many result from entrepreneurial vision, risk and energy.

Latam’s largest markets, Brazil and Mexico, produce the greatest number of high-value brands, but smaller economies also are well represented. Latin American brands often serve multiple local country markets. A few operate globally.

This vitality did not happen easily or quickly. Centuries of economic and political tribulations proceeded this relatively stable period of when more people share in the region’s prosperity and enjoy access to merchandise and brands.

To successfully market brands and grow brand value in Latam today it helps to appreciate some of this context.

The term Latin America—or the acronym Latam— is easy shorthand for describing an area of the Western Hemisphere that comprises 8.13 million square miles (21.07 million square kilometers) stretching over two continents and many islands with more than 30 countries and almost 600 million people.

Latam compresses into just two syllables a historical dichotomy of this region: that it’s a mix of two cultures, the Latin from European societies— primarily Spain and Portugal but also France—and indigenous people who inhabited the land we call America before the explorers, conquistadors and missionaries arrived.

But Latin America is more varied and complicated. Other Europeans settled. The importation of African slaves and emigration from Asia and the Middle East added diversity. And the indigenous population comprised many different peoples along with the Aztec, Mayan and Inca.

Culture, geography, natural resources and climate vary tremendously in a region that stretches more than 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from the northern border of Mexico to the tip of Chilean Patagonia. History varies as well, although several common themes prevail.