Héctor Rivero - McDonald's Spain

Marketing has never been more complex. Consumers move across countless channels, attention is fragmented, and businesses face constant pressure to deliver short-term results. Yet for Héctor Rivero, Senior Marketing Manager at McDonald's Spain, the fundamentals of brand growth remain remarkably simple: understand people, define a clear message, and stay consistent over time.

In this conversation, he shares why marketing should be viewed as a company-wide capability, why short-term pressure is often the biggest threat to growth, and why brands may need to embrace simplicity in an increasingly chaotic world.

Marketing is more than Communication

Having built his career across large consumer brands and now leading menu and brand strategy at McDonald's Spain, Héctor has seen firsthand how marketing has evolved from a communications function into a discipline that touches almost every part of a business.

One of the biggest misconceptions Héctor encounters is the tendency to equate marketing with advertising. While communication remains an important part of the discipline, he believes it represents only a small piece of what marketers actually do.

For Héctor, marketing begins long before a campaign is launched. It starts with understanding consumer needs, identifying opportunities in the market, analysing competitors, and aligning stakeholders across the organisation. Only after all of that work does communication enter the picture.

Marketing’s increasingly cross-functional nature means that marketers need to collaborate closely with finance, operations, innovation, leadership teams, agencies, and, in multinational businesses, colleagues across international markets. Success often depends as much on influencing and aligning others as it does on consumer-facing activities.

“If we reduce marketing to communication, we’re left with a very small piece of the puzzle and ignore everything that happens before and after.”

“If we reduce marketing to communication, we’re left with a very small piece of the puzzle and ignore everything that happens before and after.”

The Power of a Single Message

When discussing brand growth, Héctor acknowledges the importance of traditional measures such as market share, share of voice, and top-of-mind awareness. However, he believes some of the most valuable indicators are often the slowest moving.

Metrics such as affinity, brand love, and the extent to which consumers associate a brand with specific attributes can reveal whether a brand is building genuine strength over time. The challenge is that these indicators require patience. They cannot be changed overnight.

According to Héctor, successful brand growth depends on identifying a clear message and remaining committed to it over a long period of time. “If you really want to move the needle, you need a message, a very clear message, and you need to be very, very consistent and persistent with that message.”

For Héctor, short-term thinking is one of the greatest barriers to sustainable brand growth. Forecasts, quarterly targets, and commercial pressure can quickly distract businesses from their chosen direction. The challenge is not only creating the right strategy but maintaining it when pressure increases.

“If you really want to move the needle, you need a message, a very clear message, and you need to be very, very consistent and persistent with that message.”

Learning from Cultural Change

Throughout his career, Héctor has seen how quickly consumer behaviour can evolve. One example comes from his time at one of Spain’s best-known toy companies. Around a decade ago, they recognised that children were rapidly moving away from traditional television towards YouTube and digital content.

The company reacted early by investing heavily in content creation and finding new ways to stay present in children's lives. At the time, influencers barely existed, but children were already spending hours watching online content. The strategy helped the company maintain awareness during a period of significant media disruption.

However, Héctor believes the company later faced a more fundamental challenge. While children's media consumption habits changed, so did their relationship with play itself. As digital entertainment became increasingly dominant, children spent less time playing with physical toys. This created a much bigger challenge than simply adapting to a new media channel.

Looking back, Héctor believes brands need to understand deeper cultural shifts, not just media habits. “The challenge becomes: how can a brand overcome that situation? How can it adapt and move beyond it?” For him, remaining culturally relevant means understanding how consumers' lives are changing and ensuring the brand evolves alongside them.

Relevance, Participation and Credibility

When asked whether communication, innovation, or experience represents the biggest growth opportunity, Héctor rejects the idea that brands should choose between them. Instead, he argues that all of these elements should work together towards a common goal: remaining relevant.

That starts with understanding the context in which a brand operates and defining the role it plays within consumers’ lives. Increasingly, consumers no longer want brands to simply broadcast messages. They want participation, interaction, and in some cases even co-creation.

At the same time, relevance must be supported by credibility. For Héctor, credibility goes beyond honesty in product claims. It also means remaining authentic to what the brand genuinely represents. Brands that suddenly try to adopt personalities or values that do not fit their identity risk creating disconnect rather than engagement. “Many brands want to be something they’re not. They try to be cool and modern and end up looking like a grandfather pretending to be a rapper.”

Consistency once again becomes critical. If a brand promises something, consumers expect that promise to be maintained over time. In an era where consumers can instantly share opinions and feedback, losing credibility can quickly undermine growth.

“Many brands want to be something they’re not. They try to be cool and modern and end up looking like a grandfather pretending to be a rapper.”

The Return to Simplicity

Looking ahead, Héctor believes consumers are increasingly overwhelmed by the pace and complexity of modern life. “Consumers are at a point of enough. Enough saturation. Enough fragmentation. Enough movement and uncertainty. I want calm. I want peace. I want stability.” According to Héctor, this desire for simplicity will increasingly shape both product development and brand communication.

This shift creates important implications for both products and communication. Brands will need to deliver clear value propositions that consumers can immediately understand. Complexity may increasingly become a barrier rather than an advantage.

For marketers, this means becoming even more disciplined. Brands must have a strong understanding of who they are, why they exist, and what role they play in consumers' lives.

While Héctor expects consumer preferences to remain cyclical, with future swings back towards novelty and excitement, he believes simplicity and clarity will define successful brand building in the coming years.

“Consumers are at a point of enough. Enough saturation. Enough fragmentation. Enough movement and uncertainty. I want calm. I want peace. I want stability.”

The Marketer of the Future

As marketing continues to evolve, Héctor believes success will depend as much on personal capabilities as technical expertise. Beyond understanding positioning, insights, and communications, marketers need to be comfortable navigating ambiguity, influencing stakeholders, resolving conflicts, and balancing analytical and creative thinking.

Curiosity remains essential, as does humility. “You need to be curious, ask questions, and understand why things happen. You also need humility because if your personality is too strong, it can close doors.”

Perhaps most importantly, marketers need to build relationships. In a role that touches almost every function within an organisation, the ability to connect people, create networks, and bring stakeholders together has become one of the profession’s most valuable skills.

For Héctor, marketing has never been just about campaigns. It is about understanding people, influencing organisations, and maintaining a clear direction despite constant pressure to change course. Those who can master that balance will be best positioned to build brands that grow for the long term.

“You need to be curious, ask questions, and understand why things happen. You also need humility because if your personality is too strong, it can close doors.”