Mistake Moments: How organisations should actually respond to brand backlash

We’ve all seen it happen.

You open social media for a quick scroll and your feed is suddenly alight with the latest brand controversy. A campaign, product or piece of messaging has gone awry and the discourse begins, almost instantly. Some people defend it. Others tear it apart. Everyone has an opinion, a theory or a thread explaining exactly how the brand got it wrong.

These moments are not new, though the conditions around them have changed dramatically. Post-pandemic social and economic instability, heightened political polarisation and growing scrutiny around how organisations present themselves have created a far more sensitive and reactive environment. Social media has also transformed criticism into a collaborative forum and people are no longer passive audiences consuming campaigns quietly. They actively interpret, dissect and redistribute them through digital platforms.

In today’s attention economy, mistake moments travel fast because outrage, debate and public dissection hold attention. The faster something spreads, the faster organisations are forced into crisis mode.

If you’ve never been on the receiving end of one of these crises, count yourself lucky. At The Unmistakables, we’ve regularly been brought in to support organisations after these moments occur, particularly when campaigns or decisions involving identity, representation or community engagement have landed in ways that created backlash internally, externally or both.

What we have learned is that the mistake itself rarely tells the full story.

Much like in life, mistakes do not have to define people or organisations permanently. What shapes perception over time is the response, what was learned and whether there is a willingness to examine what sat beneath the issue in the first place.

So what normally happens when a campaign is experiencing backlash?

Once a campaign enters the public sphere, the response itself often reveals an organisation’s level of cultural confidence.

By cultural confidence, we mean an organisation’s ability to navigate difference, uncertainty and criticism with sufficient understanding, empathy and self-awareness to make informed decisions. It’s less about avoiding mistakes entirely and more about having the confidence to interrogate assumptions, involve external perspectives and respond to challenges without collapsing into defensiveness.

Once backlash begins, organisations often move quickly into crisis mode. Work gets pulled, approvals are revisited and internal teams scramble to understand how something reached the public without concerns being raised earlier. Statements are drafted while responsibility starts moving around the organisation. Who approved it? Who should have challenged it? Who failed to anticipate the response?

Other organisations retreat into silence, particularly when they fear that responding publicly could intensify scrutiny or expose weaknesses in their reasoning. In both cases, decisions are often driven more by fear of further criticism than by an understanding of what actually happened, who was affected and whether the original rationale still stands up under pressure.

That is usually where culturally unconfident organisations become visible.

 Instead of examining what the backlash might be revealing about internal assumptions, decision-making or understanding, organisations focus on limiting reputational damage and stopping there. Undoubtedly, both are needed.

It’s also important to point out that backlash does not automatically signal organisational failure. In some cases, culturally confident organisations stand by their work because the response aligns with their beliefs, values and understanding of the audience they intended to reach.

We saw this with Lush when the company partnered with Migrants’ Rights Network to challenge anti-migrant rhetoric across its UK stores. The campaign generated significant criticism precisely because it entered contested political and cultural territory, yet the organisation chose to stand by the work rather than retreat from it or immediately reshape its position in response to public pressure.

What mattered there was not the absence of criticism, but the organisation’s clarity around why the campaign existed, the robustness of its rationale and its willingness to engage a contested issue deliberately, rather than react impulsively once scrutiny arrived.

That doesn’t mean culturally confident organisations always predict public response perfectly or never face unexpected criticism. Once work enters the public sphere, audiences are rarely uniform in how they respond.

The difference is whether an organisation has enough understanding, self-awareness and internal confidence to evaluate criticism thoughtfully rather than reacting from fear or reputational panic.

Because sometimes backlash does expose deeper issues in the work. Sometimes it reveals blind spots that were never fully interrogated internally. The test is whether organisations are capable of recognising that honestly once the work is out in the world.

What rebuilding confidence actually requires

We recently worked with an organisation following a cultural mistake moment involving stereotypical representations in creative executions in advertising.

Externally, the fallout was relatively contained, though there was still criticism, reputational discomfort and some commercial impact. In truth, however, the deeper consequences were being felt internally.

Trust between colleagues had started eroding. Employees from the communities represented in the work felt embarrassed that the stereotypes had reached publication in the first place, while others questioned whether concerns could ever have been raised safely before the campaign went live. Conversations around knowledge gaps, confidence and responsibility became increasingly difficult to navigate. Defensiveness started appearing across teams and responsibility for what had happened, slowly edged toward blame and self-protection rather than constructive reflection.

That was ultimately why the organisation brought us in.

Our role was not simply to “fix” the campaign issue itself. We came in as a third party to facilitate the conversations the organisation was struggling to have internally, helping to create the conditions where concerns, uncertainty and blind spots could surface more honestly without immediately turning defensive or accusatory.

In environments where trust has started deteriorating and difficult conversations feel reputationally risky, internal teams often struggle to surface concerns objectively. People become cautious about saying the wrong thing, exposing uncertainty or challenging colleagues openly, particularly when tensions are already high.

That required psychological safety as much as education.

Before any learning sessions or tools were introduced, we recognised that people first needed space to reflect openly on what had happened and understand what actually sat beneath the moment itself rather than focusing purely on the external fallout. Through that process, we were able to understand the broader dynamics shaping the situation and tailor our approach based on recurring patterns, helping teams move forward with greater confidence rather than fear.

A particularly important nuance emerged around stereotyping and representation across creative work involving different communities and identities.

Employees from represented communities often felt an unspoken responsibility to identify issues that others in the organisation did not feel equipped or confident in raising themselves. While understandable, that responsibility had slowly become a burden. No individual can act as the singular knowledge holder for every facet of their identity, nor should cultural understanding rest solely on the shoulders of those most directly affected.

At the same time, teams beyond those communities described uncertainty around how to challenge ideas constructively without feeling as though they might say the wrong thing, overstep or damage their own credibility. Fear around discussing identity, stereotypes and representation had started making conversations narrower rather than more open, with people increasingly avoiding challenge altogether.

That became the opportunity for reflection and strategic collaboration.

Rather than treating the situation as an isolated communications problem, the work shifted toward understanding the organisational behaviours underneath it. We examined not only how decisions were made, but what dynamics, assumptions and gaps in confidence were shaping those decisions in the first place. The focus became understanding where uncertainty was avoided rather than explored and whether cultural understanding was genuinely a shared organisational capability.

From there, we developed tailored learning sessions and practical tools covering areas such as cultural appropriation, appreciation and navigating creative briefs involving different communities. The intention was not simply to “train” people, but to model and embed how culturally confident conversations could happen collectively and how teams could approach creative decision-making with greater openness, clarity and shared responsibility.

Over time, the aim was to make curiosity operational. Embedding listening informed process design to address different communities rather than existing purely as a reactive exercise after problems emerged. Teams became more equipped to interrogate assumptions earlier, involve communities more and navigate criticism without immediately defaulting to defensiveness or reputational panic. True learning opportunities are now being taken and built upon. 

Organisations often respond to the symptom, not the system

Many organisations have become more aware of the importance of culture, though far fewer have built the internal confidence needed to navigate disagreement, uncertainty and criticism collectively.

The organisations that adapt best will not be the ones avoiding backlash entirely. They will be the ones building the capability to reflect, challenge assumptions and respond thoughtfully when pressure arrives publicly.

Cultural confidence is not built through silence or reputational management alone. It develops through practice, reflection and the willingness to stay in difficult conversations long enough to understand what they are really revealing.