Marketers love bold words. Radical candor. Radical transparency. Radical acceptance. They sound daring, but in practice, they’re often hollow — more performance than principle. In organizations where truth is bent to fit the storyline, “radical” language becomes branding, not behavior.
This behavior is everywhere in marketing. We talk about candor but punish dissent. We talk about transparency, but curate dashboards that hide the bad news. We talk about acceptance, but mean compliance. It’s not the employees who can’t handle the truth — it’s the leadership. That gap between declared values and lived reality shows up in campaigns, culture and customer trust.
All this frequently happens in organizations that preach radical candor. They tell you to:
- “Bring your whole self.”
- “Be direct.”
- “Speak truth to power.”
But the second you do, you’re marked as difficult. That contradiction eats away at you. You start to feel like the crazy one for noticing what’s plain to see. That’s not resilience. That’s gaslighting.
Why marketing is prone to this
This happens throughout business, but marketing is especially prone because we are in the business of framing. When budgets get cut, we call it focus. When teams shrink, we call it efficiency. When campaigns fail, we call them learnings. The rebrand of dysfunction into virtue isn’t resilience — it’s gaslighting.
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And over time, you get burned out and exhausted from propping up stories you know aren’t true. Engagement numbers lose meaning. AI-generated content floods channels without credibility checks. Campaigns are optimized for optics, not impact. Trust erodes inside organizations and with customers alike.
The exhaustion isn’t from the effort. It’s from bridging the gap between the facts and what management wants to hear. That gap is where trust dies.
It only gets worse when leadership starts branding dysfunction with the word “radical.” Radical candor becomes feedback without safety. Radical acceptance becomes tolerance without change. Radical transparency becomes selective truth. Every time “radical” is used without substance, it deepens the disillusionment.
Dig deeper: Escaping the marketing circus: How empathy can realign brands, audiences and results
Toward something real
What does radical look like when it’s real?
- Structural candor: Feedback that actually changes decisions, not just feedback that gets filed away.
- Acceptance without spin: Calling things what they are, even when it makes everyone uncomfortable.
- Transparency with teeth: Sharing ugly numbers and painful trade-offs, not just curated dashboards.
None of this is glamorous, and none of it makes for a great keynote. But that’s the point: Radical isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be fundamental.
The word radical comes from “radix,” meaning root. It’s about getting to the root of the matter. And the root here is simple: Most organizations don’t want the truth. They want harmony, compliance and optics — the appearance of radical without the substance.
That’s not radical. That’s cowardice.
If we’re serious about changing marketing and rebuilding trust, we need to reclaim the word. Radical should mean telling the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. Accepting reality, even when it’s ugly. Being candid, even when it costs us.
If we can’t go to the root, let’s stop pretending we’re being radical at all.
Dig deeper: AI continues to aid marketers’ quest for authenticity: Report
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