Phone calls allowed an individual to project their voice to every corner of the globe instantly; television allowed the same for images; and daily airplane flights ensured that one could appear in person in any major city within 24 hours. But globalization did not really hit home in the closing decades of the 20h century until Pepsi, in the midst of forming its image as a global brand, got involved.

On this day, February 22, in 1989, a year after running the first ever English language commercial for television viewers in the USSR, Pepsi purchased a 30-second spot during the Grammy Awards on CBS, running an untranslated Spanish-language commercial featuring the enormously popular Latin pop singer Chayanne.

The deal was a win for both sides. Chayanne attained the heights of popularity in the Spanish speaking countries, but had not yet broken through into the American market. The Pepsi ad was his chance to get on the American radar; while for Pepsi, despite their insistence that their choice  “bridges linguistic and cultural boundaries,” appealed directly to the Hispanic population in the United States, which was by then at 9%.