TikTok creator Tina Amir has gone public about being dropped from a paid campaign with a Korean skincare brand because her race did not fit the target profile, reigniting debate over racial bias in Singapore's influencer marketing industry.
Amir, who posts under the handle Tinadestruit and has worked with brands such as Shein, Swisse, Tagespresso and Similac Total Comfort, said the brand, through its PR partner, reached out to her for a paid campaign, only to pull back after deciding her race did not fit the profile they were looking for. She declined to name the brand or the PR agency, citing the risk of being sued, but noted that the company 'does have a bad rep.'
According to Amir, the PR agency then made the astonishing caveat that it could 'fight for you because you're a fair [skinned] Malay,' a remark that laid bare the colourism underlying the decision. Amir declined to respond, and the agency came back the next day asking if she would still like to be part of the campaign, for free. 'So long story short, because I don't have a Chinese name, they wanted me to work for free,' Amir said in her video.
The video drew a wave of support from netizens, many of whom urged her to name the company publicly, and from fellow creators. Popular content creator Preeti Nair, known as Preetipls, shared her own experience of being dropped from cosmetics brands' PR lists despite those brands being known for 'inclusive marketing,' calling it 'just a bad idea' for companies that preach diversity in their product lines.
The episode has fuelled a wider conversation about race in Singapore and Malaysia, multi-ethnic markets where the topic remains sensitive, and about how beauty and skincare brands square their public diversity messaging with their casting decisions behind the scenes. Amir's decision to speak out without naming names has been praised by supporters as a way to start the conversation while managing the legal risks of calling out a specific company. The incident has also highlighted the precarious economics of being a minority creator in Singapore's brand ecosystem. Amir noted that the agency's fallback offer, to do the campaign for free, revealed how the industry values creators of colour: acceptable as unpaid diversity, but not worth paying when the 'target profile' calls for something else. Marketing professionals who commented on the episode said racial briefing requirements are often communicated euphemistically, through phrases about 'brand fit' or 'audience alignment', making them difficult to challenge. The 'fair-skinned Malay' remark was unusual precisely because it made the colourism explicit. Preeti Nair's account of being quietly dropped from cosmetics PR lists despite those brands' inclusive marketing added weight to the argument that the problem is structural rather than a single bad actor. For brands, the episode is a warning that diversity messaging without diverse casting will increasingly be called out, not in private feedback sessions but in viral videos.