There are few phrases more terrifying in marketing than, “We’re going viral.” It has the same energy as “Can you make this pop more?” or “Can we jump on a quick call?”
Occasionally, going viral means you’ve made something brilliant. More often, someone has misread the comments section and is adding “12 million impressions” to an awards entry while the entire country calls your product a pig trotter.
Exhibit A: said pig trotters
That was essentially the response when Sydney-based boutique Girls With Gems posted pointed heels that revealed the wearer’s middle toes. The internet compared them to ostrich feet, pig trotters and a goat having a cocktail on a night out. It was a difficult week for toes generally.
The shoes reportedly came close to selling out, revealing something marketers occasionally pretend not to understand: the people creating the attention don’t have to be the people buying the product.
Everyone mocking the shoes or sending the post to a group chat helped distribute them. Somewhere at the end of that chain was a customer looking at the same hoof-adjacent heels and thinking, I need those immediately. Add to cart.
The critics weren’t failed customers. Most were never the target audience. They became an unpaid media channel delivering the product to the people who were. The algorithm doesn’t care whether someone comments “obsessed” or “absolutely not.” Both create reach.
Sometimes the haters become the media plan.
But sometimes a brand crosses a less visible line. Nobody starts a boycott or calls corporate affairs, customers just begin finding it all a little embarrassing.
That is the brand ick. And it may be one of the most useful metrics we don’t measure.
Outrage and the ick are not the same
Outrage is loud. It comments, shares and produces eight-slide carousels about why an advertisement signals the collapse of Western civilisation. The ick is quieter. It’s the moment a brand you liked starts trying too hard, and you think, Oh God. They’re doing this now.
Sydney Sweeney is a useful example, even if she is approaching dangerous levels of case-study overuse. Her American Eagle campaign turned a “great jeans” pun into a debate about sexualisation, race and genetic superiority. It was quite a journey for some denim. The internet declared it a catastrophe; products sold out.
People being furious doesn’t automatically mean an advertisement failed. Sometimes the media plan is being delivered free by people who hate you. The ick is more dangerous because it develops among existing customers, who quietly stop opening, recommending and buying.
How brands give us the ick
It often begins with overfamiliarity. A company sells you one pair of pants and suddenly every email begins, “Hey bestie!” We are not best friends. You have my trouser size and an abandoned cart. Let’s respect the boundaries of the relationship.
Then comes trend participation. The social team discovers a TikTok sound four days late and asks the CFO to point at words above his head. You can see in his eyes that something has died. Unfortunately, it isn’t the content calendar.
Bumble found another route with billboards telling women, “You know full well a vow of celibacy is not the answer.” What was meant to sound cheeky instead sounded like a dating app instructing women to get back out there and have sex. Nothing gets you in the mood like being reprimanded by a technology platform.
Bumble assumed an intimacy it hadn’t earned. It stopped sounding like an empowering friend and started sounding like an aunt asking whether you’re being too ‘fussy’.
The ick isn’t in the dashboard
There is no Google Analytics alert that says, “Customers now find you mildly embarrassing.”
Engagement may even increase because people are forwarding your content with the message, “You need to see this.” The report records a share; the group chat records a crime.
Outrage is visible and distributive - it puts products in front of potential buyers. The ick is private and subtractive - it quietly erodes affection among customers the brand has already paid to acquire. By the time sales show the damage, the emotional shift may have happened months earlier.
So, can a brand recover?
Yes, because the ick isn’t cancellation. People don’t necessarily want the brand to disappear, they usually just want it to calm the hell down.
Resist turning the recovery into more content. We don’t need a six-part founder series titled Owning Our Ick, a Notes-app apology beginning “We’ve been listening,” or a hashtag asking customers to share their own ick.
The cure is less dramatic: pull back, listen and return to whatever made people like the brand originally. Make the product good. Be useful. Stop forcing intimacy. Allow a joke to end without turning it into merchandise.
Most importantly, determine whether people are rejecting the product or distributing it. If outsiders are laughing while buyers are purchasing, you may have productive polarisation. If loyal customers are quietly cringing, you have a brand problem.
Marketing is brilliant at measuring whether people saw us. We’re less accomplished at recognising when they have seen quite enough.
So measure awareness, consideration and conversion but add one more question to the brand tracker: Are we starting to give people the ick?
Because the dashboard might still look healthy. The report records a share. The group chat records a crime.
