I spent a decade code-switching, then 'authenticity' became a buzzword
On the moment the industry finally caught up
“Too corporate for the cool kids. Too cool for the corporate ones.”
I read that on LinkedIn a month ago and stopped scrolling - which, given my fried attention span and the sea of “what my dog taught me about leadership” posts on my feed, means something.
A creative strategist, someone who’d built campaigns for Fortune 500 companies and DJ’d the same weekend, was writing about the odd no man’s land of his career - permanently in the middle, fluent in both languages, fully claimed by neither. It wasn’t necessarily surprising, but it certainly was the most accurately I’d ever seen my own experience described by someone else.
I’ve spent over a decade doing PR and brand strategy across music, fashion, and global corporates. They are worlds that live in the same worlds, but don’t speak the same language, where a lot of your energy goes into translation.
For me, that’s never been just professional. I’m mixed race; I grew up in a melting pot of cultures, and code-switching - that quick, semi-conscious audit of which version of yourself to be as you walk through a door - started as a kid. Growing up in South London in the 90s, reading a space by energy alone wasn’t a workplace soft skill, it was just how you stayed safe, so you get pretty good at it pretty quickly.
The professional version carries its own friction. In creative spaces, I’ve felt too structured, too commercially aware, too shaped by years of C-level pushback to fully let go. In corporate spaces, it flips - too instinctive, too culturally specific, watching references that feel completely obvious to me land with a wry, diplomatic nod. If you know the correct response to Giggs’ Talking the Hardest, you’ll know what I mean. If you don’t, that’s sort of the point.
That subtle uncertainty of whether you’ve read the room right follows you everywhere, and after a while, honestly, it gets old.
Here’s the part the LinkedIn post didn’t quite get to. I wasn’t code-switching because I didn’t know who I was, I was doing it because the rooms I was in weren’t ready for who I was. When you suggest a collab with the most exciting up-and-coming fashion brand, then end up with branded product mailers and a press release for the 10th time, you learn where to spend your creative energy.
Over time, something gradually shifted. It was part seniority, part becoming a parent, twice - sleep deprivation burns off that performative layer very quickly.
But something external changed too, something I’ve only recently put my finger on. The industry started demanding “authenticity” so loudly, in every brief, every pitch, every panel talk, that at some point, the coolest thing you could do was show up undiluted. When everyone’s demanding it that urgently, you start to think, fuck it, let’s do it.
And when you do, something clicks. The thing you’d spent years being hyper-conscious of, never quite belonging in any one room, carrying references that didn’t always land, stops feeling like a liability and starts feeling like your edge.
The post frames this as “bulldozing a new lane into existence,” and I’m here for that energy, but for me, it’s been less about smashing things and more the quiet freedom to stop auditing myself at the door. The lane was already there, I’d just been told, in a hundred small ways, to use a different one.
Most cool agencies need structure, most corporations need cultural relevance, and if you’ve spent long enough living between both, your currency is being fluent in each.
The strategist asked what it means to be a professional creative in 2026. I think hundreds of people read that post and stopped scrolling for the same reason I did. I’m finally in a place where I can reference The Wire, Skepta and campaign KPIs in the same conversation and not overthink it. The industry didn’t give me permission to do that, it just finally caught up.
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