Joshua A. Hayes, MSM, Visual Infusion Strategist, FIU Alumnus
“Digital marketing today lives on rented land. You can build an entire ecosystem on a platform, then lose access overnight. I’ve had friends & clients lose tens of thousands of followers, engagement, & momentum in an instant. Starting over from zero? It sucks.
We deal with algorithm shifts, compliance walls, shadowbans, disappearing pages & policies that contradict themselves. I’ve gotten flagged for things that made no sense—some I successfully appealed, others I couldn’t. That’s where creativity becomes survival, especially when your content’s a flag magnet.
I wrote a post a while back on how censorship shapes creativity. It’s like building a puzzle with missing pieces. You adapt, workaround, & reimagine. I’ve done cannabis packaging with tight restrictions on imagery, color, & symbolism. I’ve built campaigns around sensitive & controversial social issues. You find the line, then figure out how to say what you need to say without getting clipped. Same way, people on TikTok are calling protests “concerts” just to avoid shadowbans when posting about them. It’s creative code-switching. Strategy as subversion.
Across every industry I’ve worked in (healthcare, cannabis, tobacco, banking, legal, food & beverage, etc.), one thing that has never failed me is designing platform-agnostic first. Meaning the story should hold, whether it shows up on Instagram, in a newsletter, or on the side of a building. Think omni channel: flexibility builds resilience. But don’t confuse that with copy/paste. That’s lazy & some platforms will penalize you for it. Every platform has its own cadence. Respect it. Adapt the execution. Protect the narrative.” - Hayes
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