Burn the Brief: Why Marketing Needs a Revolution (Not a Rebrand)

Let’s be honest marketing has always been political. It just pretended it wasn’t. Slap a pastel colour palette over anything and suddenly it’s "apolitical" but guess what? Selling something is saying something. Even silence is a stance.

We’re living in a time where brands are tweeting about liberation one minute and underpaying garment workers the next. Where Pride floats are sponsored by companies that fund anti-LGBTQ+ politicians. Where “sustainability” is a tab on a fast fashion website but the clothes are still made in sweatshops.

Marketing is the message and right now? The message is getting loud, lazy, and low-effort. It's time we stop trying to tweak it and start trying to dismantle it. Communism, but make it cute. What if we stopped glamorising “girlboss” energy and started asking who’s really benefiting from the boss in the first place? What if we admitted that “aesthetic” is often just capitalism in a nicer font?

Let’s be clear: we’re not here to slap Che Guevara on a tote bag and call it edgy. We’re talking about marketing with actual purpose. Systems thinking. Redistribution. Visibility that isn’t performative. Representation that isn’t sponsored.

Communism isn’t trending on TikTok (yet), but the cracks in the system are. Young people know something’s off. They don’t want lip gloss activism. They want real change and if you think marketing doesn’t have a seat at that table, you’re missing the point.

Designers, photographers, stylists, writers - we’re the ones creating culture. We’re also the ones getting underpaid, ghosted, used and abused... just like AI.

The industry milks us for ideas then throws us on the “inspo” pile. Marketing has become a machine, and we’re the free labour feeding it. Here's the twist: the machine doesn’t work without us. We are the brief. We are the algorithm. We are the moodboard, the message, the meme and we are done playing small.

SO WHAT NOW?

So what now? Marketing has a choice: evolve or implode.

We don’t want more “conscious campaigns” if the production line is still built on exploitation. We want radical honesty. Co-creation. Power shared - not hoarded.

Imagine a world where marketing didn’t manipulate, but mobilised. Where it didn’t distract. It disrupted. We can build it. We just have to stop playing nice.

Marketing isn’t broken. It’s functioning exactly how it was designed. To sell, spin, seduce. Maybe, it’s time to design something new. Less about selling out. More about showing up.

The Revolution Will Be Marketed xo