Controvery is not a brand strategy
Controversy Is Not a Brand Strategy
Ok, this took me a long time to think about. This is probably the fourth, considerably less-shouty version of this post. If you want to know what I really think, ask me when you see me. Anyway, here goes.
There’s a playbook that celebrities and politicians have been running for years. Say something outrageous. Wait for the backlash. Let the outrage cycle do the work of keeping your name in people’s mouths. Rinse and repeat.
It works, too. For them.
The problem is what happens to everyone else in the room when the PR grenade goes off.
Controversy, for a certain kind of public figure, is basically a marketing channel. It costs them nothing they weren’t already willing to lose. Their audience doesn’t shrink — it calcifies. The people who were always going to defend them defend them harder. The people who were always going to hate them generate engagement. Everyone else just watches.
But brands don’t work like that. Brands are built on trust, consistency, and the slow accumulation of goodwill. You can’t absorb a controversy the way a politician , a rapper, or a bloviating-but-tranquilised South African, can, because your relationship with your audience is fundamentally different. To most brands, they’re not fans. They’re customers. And customers don’t want to feel like they’ve picked a side just by buying a pint or going to a gig.
Wireless Festival and the Kanye problem
In early 2026, Wireless Festival announced Kanye West as the headliner for all three nights at Finsbury Park.
Now. Regardless of where you stand on the man’s music, his recent history is not exactly ambiguous. Antisemitic outbursts. A song called “Heil Htler.” Swstika merchandise on his clothing site. This isn’t someone who accidentally said the wrong thing once — this is a pattern of behaviour so extreme that multiple countries have decided they’d rather he just didn’t turn up.
Which is exactly what happened. The UK government blocked his entry, saying his presence would not be “conducive to the public good.” The festival was cancelled.
But the damage was done long before he was stopped at the border. Major sponsors Pepsi and Diageo pulled out. The festival’s reputation — built over years as one of London’s biggest music events — was shredded in a matter of weeks.
Kanye, meanwhile, offered to meet with the UK Jewish community (an offer that landed with the sincerity of a press release written by a lawyer) and moved on to whatever comes next. He always does. That’s the point. For him, this is just another chapter.
For the Wireless brand, the sponsors, the organisers, the artists who lost their slots? It’s wreckage.
Nigel Farage and Ipswich Town
This one’s closer to home — literally. I’m Ipswich-based, I founded a website to celebrate our amazing town, and I watched the Farage situation unfold with a mixture of frustration and confusion about how a club that’s spent years building a family-friendly club allowed themselves to be hijacked by fascism.
Last month, Nigel Farage (a man so right-wing, the left wing of a plane refused to fly with him in 2010) turned up at Portman Road for a stadium tour. Photos appeared of him holding up an Ipswich Town shirt with “Farage 10” on the back. A campaign video was filmed on the ground. The whole thing was clearly orchestrated as a political stunt — Farage using the club as a backdrop for his own narrative about football regulation and, let’s be honest, his personal brand.
The fan response was immediate and furious. “PR suicide for a family club.” Sponsors who’d paid to have their logos on the advertising boards behind him suddenly found themselves visually associated with one of the most divisive political figures in the country. The chairman, Mark Ashton, ended up apologising “unreservedly” and insisting the club was apolitical.
Farage called the whole thing “nonsense” and said he wanted to visit every football club in the country.
That’s the tell, isn’t it? For Farage, the backlash is the strategy. Being told he’s not welcome somewhere is basically his entire brand. He thrives on the reaction. Ipswich Town, meanwhile, spent weeks doing damage control with fans, sponsors, and a community that felt blindsided.
One moved on. The other was left holding the mess.
Elon Musk and the advertisers who got burned twice
If you want the most expensive example of this dynamic, look at X — formerly Twitter, formerly a functioning platform.
When Musk took over in 2022, he systematically gutted the teams responsible for content moderation and brand safety. Hate speech surged. Advertisers found their campaigns running alongside pro-Nazi content. And when they raised concerns, Musk’s response was, memorably, “Go fuck yourself.”
Disney, Apple, IBM, and dozens of others pulled their ad spend. Revenue dropped by as much as 59% over a five-week stretch in 2023. By 2024, advertiser support had declined by 24% year-on-year. Musk’s response? He sued the advertisers for boycotting him. The court threw it out.
The thing is, Musk didn’t lose. Not really. His personal brand — the contrarian billionaire who says what he thinks and doesn’t care who’s offended — remained intact. His audience stayed loyal. His political influence arguably grew. The controversy was the fuel.
The brands that had built their social media strategies around Twitter? They lost reach, audience data, campaign infrastructure, and years of community building. The platform they’d invested in became a liability overnight, and the person who made it one couldn’t have cared less.
The asymmetry nobody talks about
Here’s the pattern, and it’s remarkably consistent.
A controversial figure does something provocative. Brands that are adjacent — through sponsorship, partnership, platform dependency, or just physical proximity — get caught in the blast radius. The figure moves on, unscathed or even strengthened. The brand is left explaining itself to customers, sponsors, employees, and the public.
The fundamental problem is one of asymmetry. Politicians and celebrities operate on attention. Any attention. Brands operate on trust. And trust, once damaged, doesn’t come back because you issued a statement saying you’re “deeply committed to our values.”
I wrote about this dynamic from a different angle in I demand real — the gap between what brands say they stand for and what they actually tolerate when the money’s involved. The Wireless organisers knew exactly who Kanye was when they booked him. Ipswich Town’s events team knew exactly who Farage was when they let him through the door. The calculation, presumably, was that the upside was worth the risk.
It never is.
What this actually means for brands
If you’re a brand — of any size — associating yourself with a controversial public figure is not “edgy marketing.” It’s a bet that someone else’s behaviour will remain within acceptable limits. And if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the people who trade on controversy have no interest in limits.
I’ve spent 25 years building brands. The ones that endure are the ones built on human-centric storytelling and genuine community — not borrowed fame from someone who’ll forget your name by next Tuesday.
The celebrity or politician will always be fine. They’ll write a book about it. Do a podcast tour. Run for something. Their audience is built to withstand outrage because outrage is the product.
Your brand isn’t built like that. It shouldn’t have to be.
If you’re navigating brand strategy and wondering where the line is between bold and reckless, that’s the kind of thing I work on. Happy to talk.
