Branding’s Year of Fear: A Look Back at Six Blatant Backlashes from 2024

It was the poet John Lydgate who’s believed to have said that you can’t please all people all of the time.

Does it matter that he uttered those words in the 15^th century? Not at all. The maxim is as true today as ever. Faced with seemingly intractable problems including climate change, economic disparities, racial inequality and a resurgent cold war, it’s little wonder people feel powerless and angry.

Perhaps that’s why 2024 was a year of blowback—against people and politics, sure, but also against brands and what they claim to stand for. Below, six flashpoints from the last 12 months.

AI swiftly goes too far

Consumers have warily watched AI’s growing influence since the technology began replacing jobs several years ago, but wariness turned to anger in 2024.

It began when deepfake porn images of Taylor Swift jumped from 4Chan to X (formerly Twitter) and Telegram, sending Swifties (and Congress, and the Screen Actors Guild) over the edge. In March, Glasgow’s flimsy Willy Wonka “experience” enraged patrons who showed up expecting a fantasyland—promotional photos of which turned out to have been AI-generated. Accenture data shows that 60% of consumers now doubt the authenticity of things they see online, and AI’s a big reason. A study by Washington State University revealed that the more a product incorporates AI, the less likely consumers were to buy it.

Heck, even the normally tech-friendly audience at SXSW booed ChatGPT chief Peter Deng this year.

He really bowled them over

Consumers stressing over inflation probably don’t expect corporate America to comfort them—but it might be a good idea to at least not insult them.

Apparently, Kellogg’s didn’t get that memo. In February, the food giant’s CEO Gary Pilnick appeared on CNBC and suggested that eating cereal is a good meal plan for cash-strapped Americans. “If you think about the cost of cereal for a family versus what they might otherwise do, that’s going to be much more affordable,” said the chief executive, who took home over $4.4 million in compensation in 2023. Not only was Pilnick’s advice empirically dubious (food bills eat up 11% of American incomes these days), it was—in the view of many—tone deaf. “Is this the new ‘let them eat cake?’” asked on Instagrammer. Said another piqued consumer via TikTok: “I will never buy cereal again. Eat that.”

Diversity takes a hit

After years of embracing diversity (at least on paper), a phalanx of household-name brands including Ford, John Deere, Target and Lowe’s decided to abandon it in 2024, dismissing some of the very ideals they’d trumpeted until recently. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd prompted much c-suite soul searching and resulted in written pledges to increase diversity and equity inclusion, the social pendulum seems to have swung back in a case of fear caused by fear.

Social conservatives spooked and angered by corporate wokeness coalesced around activist Robbie Starbuck, whose accusatory tweets and boycott threats then spooked and angered the corporations. A recent Public Private Strategies Institute survey showed that 82% of business leaders still believe in DEI, but 2024’s counterstrike means they’ll probably be quieter about it.

The car rebrand without the car

The Jaguar nameplate conjures images of racing at LeMans and the pantherlike lines of the E-Type.

It does not, apparently, lend itself to a man in a dress wielding a yellow sledgehammer or a cast of androgynous models running around a purple moonscape like the Teletubbies. This was the face of Jag’s November rebranding effort, which in its first day notched 47 million views—many of them landing somewhere between perplexed and livid. (Oh, and the ads didn’t show a single car.)

A sampling of the responses on X: “This is surely a joke,” “This is terrible” and “What the actual hell is this?” Critics slammed the effort as gratuitously woke with an air of disgust that conjured memories of Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney debacle. AB InBev backed down amid that blowback. So far, at least, Jaguar is sticking to the road.

No end to the fighting

The Israel-Hamas war erupted in October of 2023 after armed Palestinian extremists attacked Israel and killed 1,143 people, prompting Israel to launch a military counterstrike that’s led to the deaths of 45,000.

But just as the violence spilled into 2024, so has the anger focused on brands perceived to be pro-Israel—even if “pro” means simply having a presence there. Predictably, boycotts and the threat of boycotts have centered on the most visible players including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Domino’s.

Some of the backlash was, in a sense, not new. The Arab League boycotted Coke from 1967 to 1991 after it opened an Israeli bottling plant. (For the record, Coke also has four facilities in the Palestinian territories.) McDonald’s Israel made headlines by announcing free meals for Israeli soldiers, but HQ in America reportedly had nothing to do with the decision.

Peak hits a valley

In early December, a torrent of rage and accusations filled the inbox of CEO Peter Dering. The reason? Dering’s company makes Peak Backpacks, one of which appeared on a video still released by the NYPD as it hunted for Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The public’s ire stemmed from a rumor that Dering had recognized his product himself and called the cops—which he denies doing. “We cannot associate a product serial number with a customer unless that customer has voluntarily registered their product on our site,” Dering explained in a statement.

No matter. Trolls slammed Derig as a “rat” and a “snitch.” On Instagram, another wrote: “Y’all effed with the wrong people. Enjoy what is left of your company.”