Santa Clara, CA, 13th July 2025, ZEX PR WIRE, Marketing strategist Faranak Firozan is issuing a challenge to modern brands: Stop using diversity as a front-facing tactic, and start embedding inclusion into your core creative and leadership processes. With over a decade of experience building brand narratives for consumer, tech, and purpose-driven organizations, Firozan is now taking aim at what she calls the “cosmetic approach” to diversity in marketing; where brands publicly celebrate inclusion but fail to apply those values internally.

Her latest thought leadership effort, launched this quarter through her Santa Clara-based consultancy Firozan & Co., encourages businesses to evaluate not just what their campaigns say, but who is involved in crafting them. According to Firozan, authentic diversity in branding cannot exist without representation in decision-making roles and creative teams.

“You can’t manufacture authenticity from the outside in,” says Firozan. “True inclusion starts behind the scenes, when you diversify the room where stories are written, not just the cast you put in front of the camera.”

When Diversity Becomes a Trend, Not a Value

In recent years, a wave of high-profile “diversity campaigns” have flooded the market. From casting racially diverse models in ads to releasing themed product lines for cultural celebrations, brands have made visible efforts to signal inclusion. While many of these moves are well-intentioned, Firozan believes they often fall short of meaningful change.

“The problem isn’t visibility. It’s depth,” she explains. “Diversity can’t just be aesthetic. If your campaign looks inclusive, but your leadership team and agency partners are homogenous, that gap is eventually going to show.”

Firozan points to several recent brand missteps that sparked backlash for misrepresenting communities or reducing cultural identity to a marketing theme. In many of these cases, she says, the issue wasn’t just the final creative. It was the absence of relevant voices in the development process.

“When brands get it wrong, it’s usually not because they were trying to be offensive. It’s because they lacked the lived experience or cultural insight to navigate complex narratives responsibly,” she says.

Representation Within, Not Just On-Screen

For Firozan, fixing this disconnect means looking inward: at hiring practices, leadership structures, and the composition of creative teams. Through her consulting work, she often begins client engagements with an internal audit, asking key questions about who makes decisions, whose voices shape brand direction, and whether those individuals reflect the communities the brand aims to serve.

“Putting diverse faces in a campaign without empowering diverse voices in the boardroom is performative at best,” she says. “Representation should influence not just what the story is, but how it’s told, where it’s told, and by whom.”

She encourages brands to move away from checklist-driven diversity and toward deeper inclusion strategies that begin long before campaign development. This includes building inclusive creative pipelines, investing in cultural research, and establishing long-term partnerships with community organizations.

One example comes from a client in the fashion industry who initially sought Firozan’s help developing a campaign for Black History Month. Rather than simply assembling visuals for a limited-time promotion, she guided the brand through a process of reexamining its internal creative team composition, exploring supplier diversity, and embedding cultural listening into its broader brand narrative. The result was a company-wide shift in how it approached identity, influence, and impact, and not just any other campaign.

The Risk of Getting It Wrong

In today’s digital world, audiences are quick to spot inauthentic messaging. Gen Z and millennial consumers in particular are deeply attuned to social justice issues and quick to hold brands accountable for inconsistencies between their marketing and their internal practices.

Firozan warns that brands who fail to back up their diversity messaging with internal action risk long-term damage to their credibility.

“People no longer separate your campaign from your company culture. If you say you value inclusion, but you don’t promote women, don’t hire LGBTQ+ talent, or don’t invest in community relationships, your audience will see right through it,” she notes.

Social media has made it easier than ever for consumers and employees alike to expose brands that say one thing and do another. In this climate, she believes the only sustainable approach is full transparency and a genuine commitment to change.

A Framework for Authentic Inclusion

To help clients implement inclusion behind the scenes, Firozan has introduced a framework she calls Inclusive by Design, a strategic model that guides companies through building equitable practices into every layer of brand development. The framework emphasizes four pillars:

1. People: Ensuring diverse representation across leadership, creative, and decision-making roles.
   
2. Process: Embedding inclusive practices in campaign development, from brief to execution.
   
3. Partnership: Collaborating with organizations, creators, and voices rooted in the communities being represented.
   
4. Purpose: Grounding marketing efforts in a brand’s core values and long-term commitments, not one-off initiatives.
   

Unlike typical diversity training or campaign audits, Inclusive by Design takes a holistic view of brand building, making inclusion a foundational element rather than a cosmetic addition.

“This is about equity, and not optics,” says Firozan. “When you design from the inside out, your brand doesn’t just look inclusive. It becomes a vehicle for real social progress.”

Looking Ahead: More than a Moment

Firozan is hopeful that the industry is beginning to evolve. She sees increased awareness among executives, marketers, and founders who are beginning to recognize that inclusion is not a risk but a responsibility; and ultimately, a competitive advantage.

Over the next year, she plans to expand her consulting work to include executive workshops, internal brand audits, and inclusive leadership coaching. These offerings are designed to help brands build infrastructure that supports long-term inclusion, not just reactive campaigns.

“Diversity marketing should not be limited to calendar months and social media statements. It should be baked into the DNA of the company,” she says. “We have an opportunity to create brands that reflect the world we live in, not just as it looks, but as it feels, believes, and dreams.”

About Faranak Firozan

Faranak Firozan is a marketing strategist and brand consultant based in Santa Clara, California. With over 12 years of experience in consumer branding, digital strategy, and inclusive communications, she is known for helping companies build culturally fluent, emotionally intelligent campaigns rooted in authentic values. Through her firm, Firozan & Co., she works with organizations across sectors to integrate equity and inclusion into the creative and strategic foundations of their brands.