The story behind the voice
Luis Vásquez walked into Lopez Negrete Communications in 2010 as a junior copywriter and never left. Sixteen years later he is a Creative Director, which in his case still means writing.
He has made work for Walmart, H-E-B, Verizon, Miller Lite, McDonald’s, Phillips 66, Baylor College of Medicine, Kraft, and the Ad Council — burgers and beer to hospitals and public service, which teaches you fast that people listen differently depending on what you’re asking of them. He stays with the work past the concept: casting, music, the day on set when the line that killed in the room doesn’t survive the take. He and Patrick have been finishing each other’s briefs for years, which is why the strategy and the creative on the H-E-B work sound like the same idea instead of two. A first-generation Mexican American, he writes from inside the new general market — bilingual, bicultural, bi-contextual, moving between languages the way the audience actually does.
He studied advertising at the University of Houston and minored in Mexican American Studies: the first to understand what makes people pay attention, the second to understand himself. He has no patience for the sappy version of either. He is after the detail so specific it stops you — the one that makes a person think how do they know that — because that is where the feeling actually comes from.
Built from Culture, Not for It (H-E-B Panel)
A live panel discussion moderated by Alex López Negrete, President, CEO and Co-Founder of Lopez Negrete Communications, the nation's leading independent Hispanic-owned full-service agency. In under two years, Lopez Negrete has built one of the most decorated bodies of work for the Texas Latino consumer in the grocery category for H-E-B. From the first brand campaign through Lent, Tropical Fruit, Holiday, and the World Cup, the work keeps sweeping the American Advertising Awards. This panel goes behind the award shelf to show how it actually gets made. Instead of one case study, the agency's leadership walks through the connected body of work and the cultural strategy behind it. The premise is simple: H-E-B isn't a store in your community; it's your community in the form of a store. The panel traces how that idea becomes campaigns that move the Texas Latino consumer.
On the Panel
- Patrick López Negrete, Strategy
- Luis Vásquez, Creative
- Moderated by Alex López Negrete, President, CEO and Co-Founder
What You'll Take Away
The conversation moves the way the work actually gets done: from client needs and situation, to strategy, to concept and execution. That is where a culturally grounded idea gets tested and either survives or dies. Attendees will hear how the team finds the cultural truth inside a category, how they avoid the sappy, stereotypical trap that plagues so much multicultural advertising, and how every campaign has to clear one non-negotiable bar: it must feel unmistakably on-brand for H-E-B. The result is work that is both culturally true and unique to the brand. Honest, unscripted, and built for anyone who wants their work to connect with the Texas Latino consumer, part of the fastest-growing segment in the country.