Black History Month Has Begun. Performative Brands, Take Note.

February is here. Which means Black History Month has officially begun. And like clockwork, so has the brand panic.

Cue the sudden DEI-adjacent ads. The carefully selected quote graphic. The resurfacing of the one Black senior employee. The earnest caption about listening, learning, and standing together. All of it well-intentioned. Much of it poorly timed. Almost none of it connected to anything the brand does the other eleven months of the year. At this point, it's less a celebration and more a tell.

And before this gets dismissed as yet another angry Black woman critique, let’s be clear about the intent. This is not about outrage. This is about enterprise value, brand risk, and commercial consequence. Because performative gestures around cultural moments like Black History Month do not just fall flat. They actively damage brands.

The real issue is not offense. It's trust.

Modern consumers are not passive recipients of brand messaging. They are evaluators. Interrogators. And increasingly, judges. Multiple studies have shown that consumers reward brands they perceive as authentic and penalize those they view as performative or disingenuous. Edelman’s Trust Barometer consistently demonstrates that trust is now a primary driver of brand choice, loyalty, and advocacy, often outweighing price or convenience (Edelman, 2023). When trust erodes, so does willingness to buy.

Performative cultural marketing creates a credibility gap. What a brand says during moments like Black History Month is implicitly compared against how it behaves the rest of the year. When the two don't align, audiences don't see good intentions. They see hypocrisy. And hypocrisy, well, it's expensive - ask Target.

Performative brand behavior has measurable financial consequences

This isn't theoretical. There is a growing body of evidence linking perceived inauthenticity to revenue loss, customer churn and long-term brand erosion.

Research by Sprout Social found that a majority of consumers will stop supporting brands whose values don't align with their own, particularly when brands engage in performative social messaging without follow-through (Sprout Social, 2022). Deloitte similarly reports that purpose-driven consumers are more loyal, spend more and advocate more, but only when brand actions match stated values (Deloitte, 2021). In other words, consumers are not rejecting brands for taking positions. They are rejecting brands for pretending.

When Black History Month messaging feels like a once-a-year activation rather than a reflection of lived organizational values, it signals that the brand is willing to commodify culture for attention. That erodes trust. And once trust is broken, no amount of clever creative can buy it back cheaply.

Tokenism is not representation. It is a risk signal

Highlighting Black employees during Black History Month can be powerful. It can also be deeply damaging when done without context, continuity, or care.

Tokenism communicates internal truths whether brands intend it or not. It signals limited opportunity, performative inclusion and surface-level diversity. To external audiences, that reads as a lack of organizational maturity. To internal talent, it reads as a warning.

This matters because employer brand and consumer brand are no longer separable. Glassdoor, LinkedIn and social platforms have collapsed the distance between internal culture and external reputation. Research shows that companies with strong, credible employer brands outperform peers in attraction, retention and customer perception (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004; LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 2022). When Black employees (or other minorities for that matter) are visible only when the calendar demands it, the brand narrative fractures.

Sanitizing history weakens brand authority

Another common misstep during Black History Month is the tendency to soften, sanitize, or neutralize Black history to make it brand-safe. But audiences are far more comfortable with nuance than brands give them credit for. In fact, credibility is often built through a willingness to engage complexity rather than avoid it. Brands that flatten history into inspirational quotes and generic platitudes do not come across as respectful. They come across as unserious.

Brand authority is rooted in truth-telling. And truth-telling does not require provocation. It requires clarity, context and courage.

From a strategic standpoint, brands that avoid discomfort at all costs rarely lead culture. They follow it late and loudly, which is precisely how performative behavior is created in the first place.

This is not about being woke. It is about being coherent

The strongest brands are coherent systems. Their values, behaviors, messaging and investments reinforce one another. When a brand’s Black History Month presence feels disconnected from its leadership composition, supplier diversity, community investment, or internal advancement practices, coherence breaks down.

That breakdown is visible to customers. And customers respond accordingly.

Accenture reports that value-driven consumers are willing to walk away from brands they believe are inauthentic, even when it costs them more to do so (Accenture, 2018). In that context, performative cultural marketing is not just ineffective. It is commercially irresponsible.

What this series will explore

This is the first of a three-part series examining what brands should stop doing during Black History Month and why it matters from a brand, business, and leadership perspective.

Part 2 will explore how internal culture failures inevitably surface in external brand moments, and why marketing teams often end up carrying the reputational cost of leadership decisions.

Part 3 will focus on what credible, non-performative participation actually looks like, and how brands can engage cultural moments in ways that strengthen trust rather than erode it.

Because Black History Month is not a test of creativity. It is a test of integrity.

And integrity, whether leaders like it or not, is now a balance-sheet issue.