The great corporate pretence is finally over

Well, it's 2025, and the curtain has finally fallen on corporate virtue's longest-running performance. What's remarkable isn't the ending—all shows must close eventually—but rather the collective exhale of relief from the performers as they remove their masks. It's as if a headmaster has finally left an unruly classroom, and the pretence of best behaviour has dissolved with almost freeing, palpable pleasure.

The seeds of this moment were planted in plain sight. Picture that extraordinary tableau at Trump's inauguration this week: A line of tech billionaires standing alongside cabinet members and the president's family, ready to define not just the next four years of global business, but the very architecture of public discourse itself. It was no mere coincidence that the figures in that photograph—from Mark Zuckerberg to Satya Nadella to Elon Musk—control a large slice of what will become advertising's trillion-dollar empire by 2025. They weren't just paying their respects; they were measuring the drapes.

And now, it's officially the era of the Great Trust Recession. Unlike economic downturns, where institutions at least perform remorse and promise reform, this crisis brings a startling innovation: The calculated abandonment of even the pretense of accountability. After all, when you command monopolistic platforms, when your algorithms shape global discourse, when advertising budgets have nowhere else to flow—why maintain the costly charade of trustworthiness? In the final accounting, it seems it was always meant to be written off.

What's unfolding now isn't simply another pivot in corporate strategy—it's the great unmasking of our post-truth era. Watch as Zuckerberg dismantles Meta's fact-checking guardrails while championing "workplace masculinity," as global corporations shed their DEI commitments with synchronised precision, and media giants owned by the same interests carefully massage these reversals into palatable narratives.

We always knew somewhere in our collective conscience, that corporate commitments came with invisible asterisks. That those bold ESG statements, diversity pledges, and ethical manifestos were written in pencil, not ink. But there was a comfort in the performance itself—in watching businesses at least acknowledge what they should be doing, even if we doubted their sincerity. Now, we're entering a time where even the pretence of virtue has become unnecessary baggage, discarded with the same efficiency as last quarter's emissions reports.

The familiar euphemisms too, arrive right on cue—"streamlining," "refocusing," "strategic realignment"—each word chosen to obscure rather than illuminate. But this time, the orchestra isn't even pretending to play softly, instead gleefully blaring its Trump-ets to the tune of billions. When fact-checking becomes optional, when media ownership concentrates in the same hands as tech platforms, when traditional watchdogs are bought and constrained—who's left to call the tune?

But here's the bitter irony that turns this betrayal truly Shakespearean: We funded this. As Cindy Gallop pointed out in Campaign this week, it's advertising dollars—our industry's dollars—that built these tech empires and corporate giants. We're the ones who filled their war chests, who bankrolled their expansion, and who funded their acquisition of the very media meant to hold them accountable. We handed them billions in advertising revenue while they made grand promises about diversity, inclusion, and social responsibility. Now, as they shed those commitments like last season's fashion, we're left asking: How did we become the losing side of a game we financed?

And best believe, the implications slice deeper than Western boardrooms. As global corporations shed their commitments to gender equality, minorities, and marginalised communities, they're sending a clear signal that echoes far beyond New York and London. In places like Japan, where corporate giants have struggled to meet even minimal gender parity targets, this Western retreat serves as a convenient permission slip to abandon pretense altogether. Across Asia Pacific, where progress on DEI initiatives has often moved at a glacial pace, the message is clear—the pressure's off, the performance can end.

Watch as decades of pushed-for protections unravel with frightening efficiency. Policies supporting working parents? Suddenly negotiable. Commitments to gender pay equity? Now subject to "market conditions." Programs championing LGBTQIA+ employees? Quietly disappearing from corporate websites. The genuine progress that did exist—hard-won inches gained through years of activism and advocacy—now risks being swept away in this tide of performative relief.

The ultimate sleight of hand wasn't just convincing us to trust them—it was getting us to pay for the privilege of being disappointed. Our industry poured money into platforms that promised brand safety while harbouring hate speech, funded corporations that touted diversity while maintaining glass ceilings, and supported tech giants that preached connection while dividing societies. We're not just the audience in this theatre of broken promises—we're the unwitting producers of a show that was always meant to close early.

Perhaps that's the most unsettling revelation: In our rush to build a digital future, we created a world where trust itself became just another feature to be A/B tested and optimised for quarterly results. As AI advancement accelerates and reality becomes increasingly contestable, we're learning that our supposed guardians of truth were always more interested in guardianship of profit.

So, where does this leave us? The truth is, we can't escape these platforms' gravitational pull, nor outmaneuver their elaborate regulatory choreography. We'll likely continue funding this spectacle—not out of choice, but necessity. But perhaps there's power in dropping our own pretense. If trust is now officially a depreciating asset, then let's start acting like ruthless investors. Demand granular proof for every promise. Require detailed receipts for every ethical claim. Subject each platform's commitment to the same rigorous scrutiny they apply to our ad spend. Call it self-serving if you must—it is. But when consumers lose trust in platforms, they lose trust in advertising. When they lose trust in advertising, they lose trust in brands. And when they lose trust in brands, we lose our reason for existing. In a post-trust marketplace, skepticism isn't just healthy—it's the only currency we have left to protect our own survival.

After all, what good are values when pitted against a valuation?