Critical marketing

Essays on cultural appropriation, performative allyship, gender, decolonial branding, and the ethical tensions brands can't afford to ignore.

Critical marketing

Brand activism after the retreat: what 2020–2026 actually taught us

Brand activism did not fail. What failed is the version of it that was never really activism: the seasonal commitment, the logo change, the statement with no operational correlate. The data from 2020–2026 is now precise about the cost of that difference.

Critical marketing

Brands as social agents

A brand that wants to stay relevant today needs to be more than just a name, logo, or product. It needs to position itself in the world.

Critical marketing

Decolonizing branding: the fine line between appropriation and exchange

The line between cultural appropriation and exchange is not aesthetic — it is structural. It is drawn by who benefits, who is credited, and whether the relationship was built or merely assumed.

Critical marketing

Gender identity and fashion brands

Gender-fluid fashion is not a niche strategy or a campaign moment. It is a structural shift that most brands have acknowledged without actually addressing.

Critical marketing

Age-inclusive: celebrating the value of older consumers

Marketing's obsession with youth isn't just creatively lazy — it's commercially reckless. The case for taking older consumers seriously, and doing it well.

Critical marketing

Me, you, us: social reconnection as a “new” format for the market

Collective action was always there. We just forgot to look. A 2019 dispatch on what reconnection looks like when society gets tired of itself.

THE ZIRRAH DISPATCH

Thinking out loud, delivered occasionally.

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