|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Weathered wheat paste ads on Canal Street, NYC. January 2026. Photo by Olivia Konys.
|
|
|
|
|
This piece was written anonymously by one of our strategists and first published on LBBOnline in January 2026.
|
|
|
|
|
You might know my work, but you can’t know my name. As a strategist at SYLVAIN, I’ve spent years helping the world’s biggest brands be seen. As a legal immigrant in the US, I can't afford the same visibility myself, not even in this piece.
That contradiction has become harder to ignore. Immigrant or not, many of us are feeling it at work right now—the dissonance of discussing brands while rights are stripped away, democratic norms erode, and people are taken from the streets outside our offices. Against that backdrop, our work can feel small. Even absurd.
And yet, through it all, I’ve started to notice something else. Small openings. Flickers of meaning. Not answers, exactly, but practices anyone in the brand or marketing space can return to when it gets too heavy. Ways of continuing to show up for one another, for the work, and for the possibilities still hiding in the cracks.
|
|
|
|
1. Disillusionment reorders what we value.
|
|
|
The more feelings of helplessness encroach, the more meaning I’m finding in things I used to overlook: the view from a window, the relief of a familiar song, a couple holding hands as if the world isn’t actively trying to harden them, coworkers laughing—briefly—between breaking news alerts.
The threat to ordinary life has made small details glow again—not because things are fine (they aren’t), but because suffering is real, and it’s everywhere. I feel more awake to everyone else’s existence, and my own. When you stop pretending the universe guarantees you purpose (or progress) you wake up to the life you actually have: your days, your choices, your relationships, your senses, your environment, your work. The things you can still touch.
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign gave this feeling shape. Where others described a broken city, he held up one that was messy and unjust, but also beautiful and alive. Through stories of bodega owners and their cats even as rents rose, of immigrant elders doing tai chi in the park while fearing they might be targeted, he made these lives—marked by struggle and beauty—feel unmistakably close. Not their city, but ours. The people we pass every day. The corners we already know. The moments we recognize ourselves in. Once you see life this way, meaning stops feeling abstract or unattainable. It’s already here, amidst the horror. And as marketers, we’re well positioned to point to what we usually overlook.
|
|
|
|
2. Endurance is an act of resistance.
|
|
|
These times also haven’t just made me more awake to new meaning; they’ve given me a deeper sense of responsibility. One that feels shared.
For years, people asked when I’d leave the US. Now I get asked that question constantly, and I understand why. If you have the privilege to go, this can feel like the moment. But I’ve never felt more strongly that—if I have the privilege to do so safely—I should stay. I don’t pretend that I can change the world, the country, or even the people around me. I’m not even sure I can change my own fate. But I do believe we need each other more than ever. That after more than a decade being held by this place, it’s my responsibility to help hold it now.
So I’ve started moving differently. I say the name of the immigrant who makes my coffee—not out of politeness, but recognition. Immigrant to immigrant: I see you. You matter. You made my day better. I check in more frequently with my pregnant coworkers, not even being able to imagine what it means to bring a being into these times. I’ve also wanted to show up more for my coworkers and my clients in the work. Having a job right now is a privilege. And making something good together, even when it feels small, still matters. It is also our duty: to keep our lives moving, to preserve what we can of the world we’ve known, and to keep showing up for the people around us.
The work isn’t only fighting for things to change (and we must). It’s also in being there: staying, showing up, and becoming part of that endurance. I feel lucky enough to work for a place that resists by staying committed to its values, even in quiet ways, and regularly invites the consulting industry to do the same. It’s what allows our work to exist at its best.
|
|
|
|
3. Joy is how we practice hope.
|
|
|
There’s something else I’ve noticed while trying to endure how bad the world feels: a kind of joyful mania keeps breaking through in many of us, from time to time. Like, if it’s all falling apart, we might as well dance! That can sound tone-deaf. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s necessary.
Fascism feeds on fear, repression, and the punishment of aliveness. When joy is denied, people harden or disappear inward, making cruelty easier and even encouraged. Joy disrupts that cycle. Letting it in, and letting it show, is proof that we’re not animated by fear, that something human and hopeful still exists. As Mariame Kaba says, “hope is a practice.” Joy is one way we practice it. It’s how we stay porous, connected, and unwilling to become the kind of people this moment is trying to produce.
This is exactly what Bad Bunny is doing in this year’s Super Bowl halftime show by “inviting the world to dance”—especially in Spanish, at a moment when Latinos are being targeted more openly than ever. It isn’t escapism. It’s visibility. It’s defiance. It’s saying: we’re still here, and you don’t get to make us stop dancing. It’s hope as action, and joy as resistance. The least we could do is to dance with them.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Weathered wheat paste ads on Canal Street, NYC. January 2026. Photo by Olivia Konys.
|
|
|
So when we’re asked what we can do as marketers, the answer isn’t denial or forced optimism, or pretending every brief can be a revolution. It’s refusing to let fear hollow out our imagination. It’s insisting on beauty alongside horror, joy alongside rage, and showing up anyway. Marketing and advertising were built by people who understood that visibility is never neutral: what we choose to show, celebrate, and protect shapes what survives.
I live inside that paradox every day. I help brands be seen while remaining unnamed myself. I work in an industry fluent in visibility while navigating a country where mine can be dangerous. But anonymity is not absence. I am here: working, caring, dancing, staying. Practicing hope not as a feeling, but as defiance. If visibility is power, then joy is proof of life, and care is a refusal to disappear. If we keep making space for that—at work, in public, in each other—then maybe this contradiction won’t last forever.
Maybe one day, I won't just help tell the story. One day, I'll be able to claim my place in it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Progress Report is a bi-weekly newsletter of business considerations, cultural conversations, and fun recommendations from around the world and web.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
