Outrage Culture Is Killing Great Advertising

Description

This week's episode is about what happens when outrage travels faster than context.We recorded this one live in Toronto, and it started with an ad. Good Good, one of golf's biggest YouTube channels, created a 60-second campaign with Callaway about a golfer becoming dangerously obsessed with his driver. A few seconds were clipped, reframed as domestic violence, and suddenly the internet was furious. Callaway pulled the campaign, apologized, pledged $1 million to women's golf, and left the smaller creator brand holding the bag.But when you watch the full ad, the story looks very different.That became the jumping-off point for a bigger conversation about whether brands have become too afraid of criticism to stand behind their own decisions, and what happens to creativity when every campaign is designed around avoiding the worst possible interpretation.On the episode:● Why the Good Good x Callaway ad became an internet scandal, and how clipping has created an entire economy around manufacturing outrage.● Why Callaway's biggest mistake may not have been approving the ad, but panicking when people criticized it.● Why Target's controversial Halloween costume deserved a different response. and the difference between acknowledging a genuine mistake and corporate pandering.● Whether Sézane's founder should be allowed to completely reinvent the brand after 20 years, or whether consistency becomes more important as a brand reaches iconic status.● Why Meta paid $16.8 billion over allegations surrounding addictive design and children, and why making your product addictive isn't necessarily the problem.● Whether Apple can still claim to "Think Different" when its first foldable phone arrives eight generations after Samsung.● The three questions every founder should ask before giving a celebrity or creator equity: can they improve the product, drive actual sales, or add genuine credibility?● Why the most dangerous thing a brand can do in a crisis may be allowing internet outrage to make its decisions for it.Because the internet