Dear Marketers: Put Down the Discount Code and Read a History Book
I’m a woman. I’m a marketer. And Women’s Month leaves me deeply uncomfortable — not because we shouldn’t celebrate women, but because we’ve forgotten why we do.
Somewhere between the public holidays, the hashtags, and the discount codes, we’ve lost sight of what our national days actually mean. They’ve been stripped of their depth and history, polished into saccharine “campaign moments” that marketers peddle with a wink and a sale.
And I’m calling us out.
Because no, I don’t need an agency or a brand to remind me that women are “amazing” during August. I don’t need your pastel social media post with stock images of women laughing over coffee. I don’t need to be “highlighted” like I’m a passing Instagram story. Honestly, it feels like an insult. Women’s Day exists because in 1956, more than 20 000 women marched to Parliament to protest the apartheid pass laws — an act of courage, defiance, and unity that helped shape the course of our history. That is what we should be honouring: the bravery, the risk, the sheer grit of women who stood up to an unjust system, not some sugar-coated marketing campaign designed to “engage audiences” for a month.
This isn’t just a Women’s Month problem. This is a a symptom of a marketing culture that often prioritises engagement metrics over meaningful storytelling. We’ve taken days of deep, hard-earned significance and reduced them to kitsch. To empty gestures. To “content pillars.”
Take Valentine’s Day. Already a cringefest. But it didn’t even start as a cringefest — it originated as a day to honour Saint Valentine, a man executed for secretly marrying couples in defiance of Roman law. It had depth, sacrifice, even rebellion. Fast-forward to now, and it’s a corporate free-for-all of overpriced roses, heart-shaped pizza, and “The Month of Love” fluff. (Pass me the bucket.)
Women’s Month? Same treatment.
And now I have to grit my teeth through Heritage Month — a time that should be about remembering the battles, the cultures, the stories that built this country — but no, now it’s just “Braai Day.” For the record, Heritage Day was meant to be a moment of national unity, a celebration of the diverse traditions, languages, and histories that make up South Africa. It’s the day we reflect on where we come from, the struggles overcome, and the richness of our collective identity. But in 2005, some clever campaign rebranded it into an excuse to stand around a fire and flip boerewors.
We’ve turned a day of cultural reflection into a shallow excuse for a braai — and that’s not just disappointing, it’s disrespectful.
So, marketing teams, here’s the truth: you’re better than this. You should be better than this. Stop regurgitating the same soulless “content templates” that strip meaning out of important days. Open a history book. Visit the government’s official holiday descriptions. Talk to people who were there. Understand why these days exist before you slap a “special offer” sticker on them.
Write that story.
The one with grit. With context. With actual respect for the day you’re hijacking.
Because if we keep peddling this watered-down, rainbow-filtered nonsense, we’ll raise a generation that thinks Heritage Month was invented by the guy who sells charcoal.
And that, friends, is the real tragedy.