Martha Stewart has spent decades showing people how to make their homes beautiful and their holidays memorable. So dressing as a person experiencing homelessness for Halloween, then sharing the photos alongside a promotion for her QVC candles, was certainly a choice. Somewhere between putting on the costume and directing people to shop, she lost the connection with her audience.
After receiving criticism, Stewart initially said the costume was meant to raise awareness about homelessness. She later apologized and acknowledged that her first response hadn’t gone far enough. During an appearance on TODAY, she also shared that her grandson had called the costume “tone deaf” before she posted it. Apparently, the family group chat had already provided the feedback she needed.
It's almost unbelievable to have to explain why this missed the mark. But beneath the questionable judgment is a familiar marketing problem: people with considerable resources interpret someone else’s hardship from a comfortable distance, then expect that interpretation to connect with the public. From that ivory tower, a struggle becomes a content idea while the people living through it disappear from consideration.
Cosplaying as someone who is suffering will never be an appropriate way to raise awareness. Putting on a costume doesn’t communicate what it takes to find safe housing, navigate assistance programs or get through the day without knowing where you will sleep. It turns someone’s circumstances into something you can wear for a few hours and take off when the party ends.
If Stewart wanted to use her platform to address homelessness, a much more useful connection sat right there in the candle promotion. She could have worked with QVC to dedicate a clearly stated portion of candle sales to organizations helping people secure and maintain housing. Partnering with those organizations could have helped her explain what the funds would support and direct followers toward additional ways to contribute. The attention and purchasing power were already there; she could have proposed putting them to work.
That approach would have required understanding the community she said she wanted to help. For brands, that means talking with people about their needs before deciding how to portray their lives. Someone seeing a candle ad may be facing housing insecurity themselves, or helping a loved one through it. Their reality deserves more consideration than whatever looks clever from the marketing meeting.
As holiday campaigns fill our feeds, I hope brands remember that consumers live with the issues those campaigns sometimes borrow for attention. If you want to speak about a community’s experience, listen to that community and find a meaningful way to support it. And if your grandson tells you the post is tone-deaf, save everyone the apology tour and take another look.
