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Episode 148
The Risks of Brand Activism with Professor Tyler Milfeld
When brands try to stand out through purpose or activism, they often stumble into controversy. So what's driving these missteps? And how should brands respond when backlash strikes?
This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Professor Tyler Milfeld from Villanova School of Business to discuss the hidden risks of brand activism and repositioning. Tyler unpacks why high-profile rebrands fail, when purpose messaging actually works, and how brands should respond when they face backlash. Plus, learn why doing nothing might be better than apologizing.
Topics Covered
• [04:00] Why most repositioning efforts fail
• [09:00] The credibility gap in brand purpose
• [12:00] When pro-social brands don't benefit from purpose ads
• [18:00] How brand power changes the rules for activism
• [21:00] The worst response to brand activism backlash
• [29:00] Why great insights matter more than shiny objects
• [32:00] Marketing communication needs more fun
Resources:
2025 MediaPost Article
Villanova University Page
Tyler Milfeld’s LinkedIn
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
Chief Marketing Officer
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Tyler Milfeld
Assistant Professor of Marketing at Villanova University
Transcript
Tyler: Having a good foundation in quant is really essential, but I think some of these things are kind of like shiny objects and at the core of marketing, I always tell folks is a really great insight drives great marketing, and I think sometimes we forget that and it gets lost in these shiny objects.
Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product architect of Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hello.
Angela: Hey guys.
Elena: We're joined by a special guest professor Tyler Milfeld from Villanova School of Business. Tyler is a former senior brand manager who spent time on the brand side at companies like Hershey, Hills Pet, and PepsiCo. Tyler's research focuses on how brands communicate purpose, specifically when social purpose, sustainability, and brand activism actually build credibility and when they might trigger skepticism or backlash. His work has been published in leading journals like the Journal of Advertising and Journal of Product and Brand Management, and he's presented his research at conferences like the American Academy of Advertising. Tyler, thanks so much for joining us.
Tyler: Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Rob: Now Tyler, I have to make a confession. I really don't like cats. I think they're sneaky and I think they have an agenda. Now, you on the other hand, while working at Hills Pet Nutrition were actually involved in creating an eighth day of the week just dedicated to cats called Catter Day. Now, was this beyond a professional endeavor? Are you a big cat lover? And is Catter Day still recognized in some cat lover circles as an official day?
Tyler: Rob, I love that we're going back into the archives. That's actually one of my proudest moments in marketing is the creation of Catter Day, along with the fantastic folks at Petco, but I have to confess, I'm not a cat lover. We have a beagle. She's fun, she's spirited, she's energetic. I think she's trying to beat down the door over here just to get in as we speak. But Catter Day was something that really resonated a lot with the cat fans, the cat lovers, and when we introduced it, it was such a hit that we just kept doing and building different things to make it fun for all the cat lovers out there. So I hope that it still lives on in some form out there somewhere, but it is one of my proudest marketing moments for sure.
Rob: So it sounds like it was an idea that not only had legs, it had four legs.
Tyler: It had four legs. Correct. And depending on how many cats you have, it could have like 20 legs or 24.
Rob: That's true.
Elena: Oh my gosh. Funny, Tyler. We don't need to get into this now 'cause this could turn into a whole episode, but my parents have a beagle and they're funny dogs. They're very special animals.
Tyler: My wife uses that word to describe our beagle very often, that she's special. She's special when she jumps up on the table and eats food. She's special when she tries to leap and grab food out of our kids' hands. They're older now, so they just pat her down, but she is a special one for sure.
Elena: Yes. Oh my gosh. Funny. Well, thanks again for joining us today. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And I'm gonna kick us off how I always do with a piece of research, lots of options here for Tyler. But I chose an article that he wrote for media posts recently, and it's titled "What Drives Brand Repositioning And Why Do Those Efforts Fail?" In it, Tyler looks at why so many high profile rebrands and repositioning efforts sometimes struggle, and it's not for the reasons most marketers assume. Instead of focusing on logos or your messaging, this article zooms out to the underlying forces that push brands to reposition in the first place and how often those forces can be misunderstood or oversimplified. I thought it was a nice reframe of why these efforts tend to fail sometimes, and they can fail publicly, and they can be very expensive for the brands that undergo them. That's just a small snapshot of the thinking that Tyler brings to marketing effectiveness, and so we're excited to dig into it more today. But let's start there with rebrands, 'cause what a fun topic at the highest level. Tyler, why do so many high profile rebrands and sort of reposition efforts seem to fail? And what are brands typically getting wrong before they ever go about changing something like a logo, a color, a message?
Tyler: I've been a part of several repositioning efforts and they're hard things to do, right? They're more complex than I think most consumers realize because of so many different brand touchpoints. And when I think about why repositioning fails, I have four Rs that I often think about. So we'll stick with kind of repositioning and four different Rs. And I think it all starts with the first R, which is resistance. Consumers don't like change unless they're motivated to change. We're in a new year now, it's 2026. Folks are motivated to do all sorts of changes. The gyms are crowded. People are eating healthier, but they're motivated to do those things. Brands are motivated to change because it's in their best interests to be relevant. At the same time, consumers, particularly the ones who love the brand, don't see a need to change. So you've got some initial inertia there. I think the second R is about replacement. And unlike product innovation where you have your Reese's and your Reese's with all sorts of other ingredients over here that you can add across the portfolio, brand positioning replaces—a new brand position replaces the old, right? So two personalities, two brand positions don't exist at the same time. So consumers naturally compare what they see now and frankly, what they generally like to where it's going, and that resistance again, creates some inertia. So it's one of those situations where there's a natural comparison or contrast that happens that doesn't always work in the brand's favor. And then I'll talk about the other two Rs from my own experience in marketing. I think one of the big things is what I call relativity. As marketers, we spend a ton of time thinking, living, breathing the brand, whether it's the Hershey's brand, the Hills PET brand, Science Diet, whatever it might be, and often forget the consumers spend a fraction of that time thinking about our brand. So when you go into repositioning, you're spending months, years, thousands of dollars just trying to unpack kind of what this new repositioning could be. And it's often behind closed doors and you kind of sit in the office and you think about, should we do it this way? Should we call it this? Should we call it that? Do we like this word? Do we like that word? And then all of a sudden there's a grand reveal at the end. And again, consumers didn't really see a need for the change, but you've been a part of this for months, years, sometimes even longer. So there's a relative imbalance in terms of the amount of time you've spent and what your consumers have, which is virtually none. And I think one of the things that brands can do now that is really cool and helps you get feedback better, earlier, faster than ever before is to use synthetic data. When you're trying to think about these different positioning efforts, create a persona, use some prompts, and get much more initial feedback than waiting for the traditional consumer research and waiting till you're much further down. And the last one is rigidity. I think as marketers, particularly when you've lived on a brand for a while, you have a vision for it, as you very well should. And I remember at one of my stops along the way, it was very clear where the executive leadership team wanted to take this brand. They developed some creative and they were going to launch this thing regardless of what consumers said. They didn't like what we knew from consumer research, they went ahead with it, trying to move the brand in new direction. It was an incredible failure, not surprisingly, but I think that rigidity can really harm repositioning efforts, right? You think you know where you want to go, but sometimes consumers aren't ready for it again. They're not ready for change. And all of those things can contribute to repositioning failures.
Elena: Yeah, so interesting. Kind of a sunk cost fallacy, like you've worked on it for so long, they're like, we're just gonna do it no matter what. No, it's super interesting and helps explain how sometimes these rebrands come out and as a marketer and a consumer, you're thinking, how in the world did you get here? But if you're working on the brand and in the brand, it could be a very different story. One other thing that is often commented on from brands and marketers is brand purpose. Sometimes that seems to come outta nowhere from certain brands and people can be very critical of that. And we have talked about brand purpose on the show before, and in past conversations we have been fairly skeptical of how it's used in marketing. But I think I'm really interested in your perspective because it's more nuanced. So based on your research, why does purpose—and I like to say purpose sort of broadly defined, not just tied to social causes—why can it feel like such an attractive solution when brands are under this pressure to evolve? And where do brands most often get it wrong when they do decide to activate it?
Tyler: So when you think about positioning, right? You think about being different and being relevant. And brand purpose really became in vogue, maybe in the last five or so years. It was kind of one of the words of the year. It encapsulates, as you pointed out, Elena, a lot more than just social purpose, but that's kind of been its foundational identity is—we're going to get involved in the social purpose space as a brand. And as brands have started to see this tide of consumers who've expressed greater interest in what brands do in terms of doing good for society, it's become this shortcut to relevance. When you think about, oh, what are people talking about in society? Well, they're talking about social issues. They're talking about sustainability. They're talking about this, they're talking about that. Why don't we try to insert ourselves in that so we can become more relevant as a brand? And I think that's where brands have really started to see that as, okay, maybe we can just become relevant through this particular lens. It's no different than one of the things, as an educator, you always ask yourself, how can I be relevant to my students? And one thing you could think about is, well, maybe I should talk about the TV shows that they watch. And I could do that, right? I could walk in and I could start talking about Gossip Girl, which a lot of students love, but I know nothing about it. I know absolutely nothing about it. I know a lot about How I Met Your Mother, but I know nothing about Gossip Girl. So when brands try to insert themselves in ways where they don't have a history, they don't have credibility, just in an effort to be relevant, it comes across as just odd, like me talking about Gossip Girl. So I think as a brand, there are so many more other ways to be relevant, right? It's not just through social issues. It's not just through brand activism, it's through your products. It's through meeting consumers where they are and where they are in their lives and other things that they want in their lives. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get deeper into our conversation today.
Elena: Yeah. I love how you describe it as like this credibility gap. I thought that was a nice way to position some of those challenges. Another part of your research that I thought was really interesting was you found that brands that have an established pro-social reputation, they don't always see an immediate lift from purpose advertising at all. So why is that? And then if that's the case, what's the strategic role then would purpose play for those brands?
Tyler: Okay, so I'm gonna answer that question but I'm gonna put you on the spot for a second. Okay. So my first question for you all of the day is when you think about a brand that has a pro-social reputation, don't overthink it. What is the first one that comes to mind?
Elena: Patagonia. I'm wearing it.
Tyler: Right? So inevitably we've asked this question to hundreds, maybe thousands of consumers along the way. Patagonia is one. Can you guess what some of the others are that come to mind?
Rob: I was actually gonna go with Pepsi.
Tyler: Pepsi that comes up a little bit, but not as much as a couple big ones.
Angela: Pepsi got in trouble.
Rob: That's why it came to, that's why it came to mind.
Elena: I was gonna say like Ben and Jerry's.
Angela: Yeah.
Rob: Oh, Ben and Jerry's, definitely. That's a good one.
Tyler: Ben and Jerry's. So Ben and Jerry's, Seventh Generation is another one. So these brands have cultivated a reputation for social purpose and when consumers think about these brands, they think about social purpose. When you think about Breyers, when you think about some of the others in those categories, they don't have that reputation. And we just talked a minute ago about the credibility gap. So when a brand like Ben and Jerry's, or Seventh Generation or Patagonia launches a pro-social message, compared to a brand like Breyer's or a brand in the category that doesn't, there is a credibility gap. So let's just start there. Ben and Jerry's versus Breyer's would have an advantage when communicating a pro-social message because consumers perceive them to be more credible. At the same time though, I'll use this example since we're coming off the holidays and we'll bring in Rob for a second. So if you think about your holidays and you think about someone who's particularly generous, like Uncle Rob, we'll call him Uncle Rob over here. And every Christmas Rob gives everyone in his family a hundred dollars gift card and he's been doing this for years. You seem like a generous guy.
Rob: Absolutely. I just throw 'em at 'em, like
Tyler: You just, you're just throwing gift cards left and right. They're coming, you got pockets full of them, so Rob's giving out gift cards left and right. He's been doing this for 20 years. When you see Rob doing this for the 20th Christmas in a row, do you like him more? Probably not right? You think to yourself like, this is kind of what he does. This is his thing. It helps entrench his reputation as a generous guy, but doesn't make you like him more. And I think that's the distinction that we're talking about with brands with a pro-social reputation. Patagonia, Seventh Generation can keep launching these pro-social messages. In the short term, it doesn't make people like them more. It gives them an advantage versus brands that don't. But it adds to that schema that people have now. How brands can get you—brands like that can get you to like them more is they can expand what it means to be generous or pro-social, to expand that overall sphere of influence or tent. So then it adds other nodes to your schema of that particular brand.
Angela: I love this conversation so much. We're right on the edge of like behavioral psychology, which these guys know as like a major love topic of mine. But like the example you gave and you can see the eye roll that happens in the community when there's so much talk about purpose. Auntie Elena shows up in year 10 with a hundred dollars gift cards right next to Uncle Rob and you can just see the eye roll that happens. Like that was Uncle Rob's thing. Like, what are you even doing? Right.
Rob: Auntie Elena.
Angela: So Tyler, with the research you've done on sustainability messaging, I'm curious what you've learned about how these messages land across a broad consumer base versus maybe among people who do seem to be more values driven.
Tyler: Yeah, so I'll give you the really short, maybe couple minute response to this. So if you think about consumers, they're high value, high issue knowledge, high involvement consumers versus lower issue knowledge, lower environmental concern consumers. So if you think about that as a spectrum, along that particular spectrum, the way you talk to those consumers is very different. And we've done a bunch of studies that have unpacked some really core insights. So for the folks that are really super involved, super knowledgeable about those issues, those are the ones that actually scrutinize the message more. And in the case of brand activism, when they would see a brand like Breyers launching into a discussion about whatever sociopolitical issue it was, and they're the ones who are really knowledgeable about it, they're the ones who are most likely to punish the brand and say, wait a second, this is not your thing. You don't have a history of this. I don't see you as credible at all. So for those folks that are really involved, they tend to like it, but they're also very discerning. If you shift to the other end of the spectrum, the folks who are less involved just care a lot less. One of the big things we found with them is that less is more. One of my colleagues and I did this really cool research project about tips. So it's the time of the year where you get tips for different things and on Earth Day brands—weak brands would do this kind of thing, right? Here's one tip to live a greener life. Here's five tips, here's 30 tips, here's a thousand tips. And we thought to ourself, I wonder how many is the optimal amount to engage folks into those tips and maybe make them want to do one of them or a couple of them. And it turns out, again, for the folks on the high side, they love all of them. They love one, they love three, they love a thousand. But for folks on the low side who are less concerned, less involved, less is more. One tip is much better for them versus three, versus five versus seven, versus any other number that we tested. So when you think about consumers, think about that particular spectrum and the different messaging that may resonate with them.
Angela: Do you think that brand power changes the rules for these companies? Do large or category leading brands maybe get more forgiveness when they do take a stand? Or conversely, are they actually held to a higher standard because they do have that brand power?
Tyler: 100%. I think brand power factors into this equation in a very significant way, and if you think about the brands that have emerged in the media for their social issue stances, their sociopolitical stances, what you've seen are the big brands, Targets of the world, amongst some others because those brands not only are big and they're under the microscope, but we'll also have more established schemas of them. So we've talked about schemas as part of this discussion. They kind of know when they think of Target, it has these series of characteristics, and when brand activism doesn't really fit, it creates a disconnect for them. So brand power, I think those bigger brands are held to a different standard. And one of the expressions that I don't love—I know we'll talk about some contrarian things later, but one expression that I don't love is that we have a voice and so we're going to use it. And I think some folks have misinterpreted that to say, oh, that means we have an audience and we're a big brand, we should take a stand on a social issue. But that's no different than me saying I have a room full of students, I wanna share my opinion about Gossip Girl when I know nothing about it. Maybe I learned something. I listened to a podcast about it. One of my students told me something, but I'm not credible in that particular space, and that's exactly what consumers think when these big brands insert themselves, unless they've had a reputation like a Ben and Jerry's, like a Patagonia, it just comes across as disingenuous.
Rob: I don't want an Earth Day tip from a chicken sandwich company.
Tyler: That's right.
Angela: Well, you can see the challenge of being a big brand then, because we talk a lot on the podcast about how brands grow through reach and creating relevance with as many consumers as you possibly can for a variety of reasons. So a brand like Coke or a brand like Pepsi, like everyone needs to know them. And so you've got all of these potential segments of customers that care about different things. What do I even talk about? Maybe just the product. That's your product's good enough. Let's talk a little bit about brands that have gotten into a bit of trouble. I think we all probably have an example we can think of. Could be Pepsi, could be Bud Light, could be your own. But when brands do find themselves in trouble, whether it's backlash, controversy, cultural pressure, what does the research suggest that leaders should be thinking about before they respond?
Tyler: So I'll give a quick shout out to my colleagues, Jenny and Courtney, who we worked together on this particular question. How should brands respond to brand activism backlash? They're the brains behind the operation. I'll be the face of it today, so I'll do my best to summarize our findings. There's been a lot of research that has shown when brands take a stand that there is some backlash or it negatively affects people's attitudes toward the brand. So we asked ourselves and said, well, wait a second. We know that how a brand ultimately responds may change the way people think about the brand positively or negatively. So when you think about how brands typically respond to backlash in this sociopolitical arena, what do they typically do?
Angela: I think they usually back down.
Tyler: Yeah, they back down.
Elena: You get one of those long statements that they post on Instagram.
Tyler: Yes. You have a long statement and they back down. So we call that retraction. Target, for example, said, Hey, wait a second, we're going to withdraw these products and put them online. A lot of brands say that, just kidding. We didn't really mean that. We take everything back and we're bringing it back to our corporate office.
Rob: Catter Day.
Tyler: Right, and we're gonna rethink it. So it turns out that is actually the worst thing that a brand can do, because what happens is the people who were upset with you to begin with are still mad, right? They still disagree with your stance, and now you've upset the apple cart on the other side. Were the people who were with you before now look at it and say, wait a second. You didn't really mean it. You're not standing behind it. It wasn't really a genuine stance. So now you have both camps that see your brand in the firestorm, so it actually fuels the flames or fans the flames and makes things worse. So we looked at what are some other strategies that might be effective, and it turns out, which was one of our most fascinating findings, that doing nothing at all is better than retraction. Doing nothing at all is very similar to doubling down and saying, wait a second. You know what? Maybe you didn't hear us the first time. We still stand behind this. This is what we believe is equally effective as not responding and moving back to product oriented messaging. The one thing that we also found is that if you are going to retract, it can be effective and reduce perceptions of hypocrisy if there is some sort of basic need, like when you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, some basic need that you can appeal to. Like Target talked about safety. We are going to pull this because of concerns about employee safety. In that case, retraction actually becomes effective. But if you just retract it like Elena was talking about with these long statements and say, we didn't really mean it, we apologize, that does not work at all.
Angela: So I'm curious then, this is a little off the cuff here, but what's your perspective on the Cracker Barrel retraction? Like that one to me, we've all seen poor retraction done where you're like, you should have just said nothing. That's even worse now that you've opened your mouth and responded to it versus the way they went about it. I don't know. It felt a little, maybe like it turned in their direction. What's your perspective?
Tyler: Yeah, so it's interesting because we looked at crises more broadly and what we found is like a repositioning, brand marketing crisis is very different than a brand crisis.
Angela: Okay, sure.
Tyler: How you handle those is very different. And what we found is that brands tend to revert to their regular crisis management strategies when they think about brand activism. But those things don't work. Like retraction doesn't work. It may work, for example, when you have a product that has a quality issue, right? You want to retract it, you wanna apologize. That makes a ton of sense, exactly what you should do. Every crisis management book in the world would say that's exactly what you wanna do. When you apply that into this context, it has a very different outcome. So the way that you communicate your response is very different.
Angela: That makes sense. So if A CMO is considering purpose or sustainability as a part of a broader brand shift, what should they figure out before doing anything publicly?
Tyler: So one of the things that we've looked at is this difference between showing versus telling. A lot of brands come out and say, our mission is this, our purpose is this. We believe that, right? Those are telling statements. I think what a brand should think about before they start to enter the purpose discussion is look into the brand, look into the history, look into the past and say, what have we done that we could use as an anchor? As we potentially move into this space, what can we show consumers that we've done that we've demonstrated that gives us a right to move into this particular arena? And then in the present, think about the products and services and how they connect to that so it becomes a more integrated enterprise and doesn't appear just a one-off mission statement. And then in the future, think about, as we talked about earlier in this discussion, how you can build some different layers or nodes alongside what you've used as this anchor so that it becomes a little bit more of a natural essence of the brand. And you can see the brand's history as feeding into where it wants to go in the future.
Angela: It's essentially just a thoughtful approach to, do we have credibility or how do we make it real or is it real, the desire that we have? And then how do we ensure that it shows up as real? Love that.
Rob: It's all a bit spicy. Your research is so interesting. I think because it has a bit of an edge to it and you have to translate this research into something that marketers are able to use. What's it really like publishing marketing research, especially when it does challenge how marketers think about how things like purpose or brand activism work?
Tyler: Well, it takes a lot of patience because the publication timeline in academia is really long, and when you think about things that are super relevant, like purpose, we may start a project two years ago, and now it finally makes its way into a publication because that's just the nature of the peer review process, which has a lot of positive merits to it. But I think that also gives us, at least when we start a project, the idea to think about, okay, how can we ensure this is going to have a shelf life? And it's not just a passing fad, but things that can apply to broader principles of marketing. When you think about purpose, when you think about positioning, those kinds of things that will stand the test. But I love doing research in this particular area. It might surprise you. I don't go in with particular opinions one way or the other. I have a hypothesis about what might happen, but it never ceases to amaze me that consumers surprise us, right? It happened when I worked in marketing. It happens now, or sometimes the hypothesis comes back and it's unsupported, or the data has moved in a different direction, and I think that's the fun part. You start to create insight from the data and let the data tell you what's going on with this particular issue.
Rob: Let the data rule. You have two different audiences in your profession as a professor, right? You have the marketers who obviously love to read what you have studied, but you also have the students, right? So when you think about the classroom and your perspective as an educator, how do you feel about marketing, the state of marketing and all these kids who are looking to you to understand what the world is gonna look like? How do you express that to them? What worries you about how marketing is being practiced today?
Tyler: I tell my students that there's never been a better time to get into marketing. I feel like it's such a dynamic environment. There's so many opportunities out there, tech's driving it in ways, in faster ways than it ever has before. With the use of AI and synthetic data, the stuff that we've talked about, you have programmatic advertising. I mean, you have all sorts of really cool things that are happening, so you have the tech side. You've also got the quant side. We've never had more access to data, so I always tell my students as well, having a good foundation in quant is really essential, but I think some of these things are kind of like shiny objects and at the core of marketing, I always tell folks is a really great insight drives great marketing, and I think sometimes we forget that and it gets lost in these shiny objects. I'm a long distance runner. I love running and there's one campaign that I always think about that truly resonated with me and we're gonna flash back. You flashed back to Catter days earlier, Rob. So I'm gonna flash back even before that. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it was an Adidas campaign that talked about, that targeted serious runners and the headline was, "Yeah, we're different." And it showed a runner stretching at the bank, spitting on the side of the road. It showed someone's office with bibs on full display. I have no idea where my PhD diploma is, but I know exactly where all my bibs are. Right? And as soon as I saw that campaign, I was like, oh, they get me, right? This brand understands me in a way that others don't. It was a really great insight, and one of the things I emphasize with my students is that it all starts with a really great data-driven insight. Talk about celebrities or influencers and all this stuff, but without a really great insight, your marketing will be okay. It might actually cut through the clutter, but what cuts through the clutter is a really great insight. And I teach marketing research, so I love teaching that class because you really look at all the different ways that you can get to an insight. And those, while some of the use of AI and those other technologies have accelerated that process, it hasn't changed the fundamentals of it.
Rob: You make me wanna get into marketing. You've got a good speech there to the kids. We always ask this question. We like to get it extra spicy. What's your most contrarian marketing opinion?
Tyler: So I was gonna talk about one, but it came up in an earlier podcast episode. But I will offer something else that might be a little contrarian. Authenticity is not a word that I love. I think we have beaten that word down to all sorts of different dimensions. I was reading an article the other day. It had like 35 dimensions of authenticity. It's like, I think we're making this more complex than it needs to be. Right. Authenticity is, are you doing what I think you should be doing, saying what I think you should be saying based on what I know about you? So I think authenticity has become a big buzzword in marketing, but I think a word that we're missing in marketing is actually fun. And my, I guess my contrarian view is I think marketing communication—not the practice of marketing, but marketing communication—used to be more fun. We live in an era where everything's, I mean, it's gray outside today, I'm looking outside my window. It's gray. There's just not as much color. Purpose, sustainability, like those are serious things. Brands have gotten themselves inserted into really serious things, but marketing I think has the chance to be a really bright light and add fun to people's days. I was looking through my email earlier today. How many marketing emails do you get a day?
Elena: So many.
Tyler: So many, right? And a lot of them say the same thing. I got one from Goodr, the sunglasses company that absolutely made my day. It started with greeting me "Ahoy Tyler," which I thought was so fun. Right? Who says that? But I was like, oh, I wanna see what they're talking about. And they started talking about flamingos and I don't really remember what it was, but I remember it was super fun. I remember it kind of made my day and it made me super excited to wear these sunglasses when I run, which are also super fun. That is kind of an outlier, right? Most brand communication, most marketing communication is pretty serious, pretty standard. It kind of stays in a box. I think brands try to spice it up to use kind of Rob's term with celebrities, things like that. But at the core, I think marketing can be more fun. Whenever I go in to teach a class, now the students don't always perceive it this way, but I always say to myself, I wanna do one fun thing today in class. Maybe it's fun for just me, but I'm gonna have a good time doing this one fun thing. And I think marketers should think about that too. When you send out an email, when you're doing some kind of communication with your customers, what is something fun that you can add? And I think that's a real opportunity in the marketing space.
Elena: I agree. That's a great one. I think some of that comes from just this fear of getting things wrong now too, where you end up with TV commercials and messaging that just gets so watered down because you're afraid of making anybody upset. But I like the reframe to think about how do we inject fun.
Tyler: And I'll say one more thing on that note too. So my colleague Matthew Pittman, I'll give him a shout out too. So we did some research on fun and one of the things that we found was when particularly when we were talking to consumers and interviewed them, it was hard for them to come up with examples of fun advertising and fun brand communication. Like it took longer than you would hope or you would think, and we distilled fun into some different types and had a great time doing it, but that was really eye-opening for us.
Angela: Were you also asking them about sad communication or angry communication, or was it just focused on fun?
Tyler: We only focused on fun, but I'd be willing to bet that they'd be able to come up with examples faster on a lot of other things. And you know what? I think we're gonna do that. We'll compare how salient fun is versus some other ideas. So we're gonna take that, we're gonna go back into the lab. We'll do some of that and maybe I'll come back on and I'll share with you what we found.
Elena: Yeah, that sounds great. This has been amazing. I've learned so much. You're such a great communicator and the research is so interesting. I wanna wrap up with kind of a fun question. I guess it's fun for us as people who love marketing research. Tyler, what is a brand repositioning or a rebrand that you personally think worked really well? I think we often talk about the negatives, but what's one that you think is an example of it going right?
Tyler: So I'll give you two as we close our conversation today. Both were very prevalent in the Milfeld family Christmas. So the first is Lego, and I think Lego has done a remarkable job of repositioning themselves in an era where phones are prevalent and a major distraction, right? Everyone always has their phone with them. And Lego faced this dilemma years ago and had a lot of pushback that said, Hey, you know what, you're not gonna compete with video games. You gotta, you actually have to get online. You have to embrace that particular space. And they did some research which found that folks actually wanna break from all that and they want to have these moments of play and creativity. And it's actually not just kids, but it's adults too. And I will tell you, my son and I were building Legos a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know who had more fun. I think I actually had more fun because Lego was actually now positioned not only for kids, but for adults, but all around this idea of play, which was deep in the brand's history. The other example that I think is also really good is Garmin. So when you think about Garmin, most people would think about it as those GPS devices that you have in your car, right? It would sit on the dashboard and it would tell you where to go, and as that became—or that gave way, it became outdated. It gave way to some other devices like your phones. Garmin had to reposition and so they used that strength that they had about tracking and move themselves into the outdoor fitness space. I have to tell you, I have a Garmin watch. Actually, this is my second one, so I'll thank my family. They gave me one for Christmas. I love this thing. I absolutely love this watch. It tracks so many different aspects of the day and of running, but they leveraged what they were known for and their strengths about tracking, pinpoint tracking and transitioned it into the outdoor space where people wanted to track their runs or their walks or their hikes or whatever it is, and they have done a masterful job in that. When you think about Garmin watches now, and they have them for all different price points, they have all different features, but I think it really speaks to the brand saying, okay, well we're not gonna be in this particular space anymore, but there is a transferable point of difference that we can apply into some other areas. And I think at the heart of both of those, as we opened our conversation today, is the brand thinking about who are we? Who are we fundamentally and leveraging that particular strength or that particular node as you move into the future. So it becomes a much more seamless transition, and that's where some of the brands have not done as well, is because you have that contrast effect, new versus old. It doesn't really represent anything from the old, so it gets lost for consumers.
Angela: That's such a great example. You can hear the board debates over, I think we should take on Apple in the smartwatch category, right? You're like, yeah.
Elena: Rob wants to.
Rob: You know what? Mine's a history lesson, which just felt appropriate since we're talking to a professor, but I grew up in the eighties. All right, so I'm a little older. And in the eighties, Target was a store that you went to to buy detergent and socks. You would never in a million years think it was cool. You would never buy their clothes unless you wanted to get teased at school. And it was in the late nineties when they said, we're never gonna be able to continue to compete on price against Walmart and Kmart, affectionately called, came apart. So they needed a pivot and really bring design into their brand imaging. I mean, now everyone says Tarjé, but believe me, nobody said Tarjé back in the late eighties. So that was a pretty amazing brand pivot. When you think about just repositioning, they brought on amazing designers like Michael Graves and just really introduced a whole new positioning of value.
Tyler: That's a great example. And you're right. I mean, Target's journey, Target's evolution is pretty impressive.
Rob: It is, and then they of course got caught up in the cause marketing stuff themselves, so you know,
Angela: Gotta stay on the right track. All right. I'm taking us to food from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. I love that they didn't try to reinvent themselves or bolt on some higher purpose. They just doubled down and got radically clear about who they already were during a time where people were getting very health conscious, health forward. And they just said, Nope, we're gonna be who we are. We've got a distinctive asset in the Colonel, we're gonna stick with it. And they brought in some sort of absurd humor. It worked. It worked for me.
Elena: Mine's a little, maybe, I dunno if it's controversial, but this brand I think is known for horrible rebrands, which is HBO. You know, they went to HBO Go, HBO Max. No, but listen, bear with me. And they had all these different Maxes and if you look at their logos, it's crazy. Like all the different logos they had, Maxes and all these different colors. And last year they went back, they brought back their original colors. And I think there's bravery in that. And we've changed—you can imagine like we've changed so much. How do you pitch it again? But somebody did and they brought them back to, I know we talked about Tyler, you were talking about how do you bring the old with the new and I'm hoping now they've got it. I think the place they're at today is better. But that does take courage to be willing to make another pivot. But I think where they're at today seems a lot more like they're bringing back the roots of the brand and hopefully they're able to stick with it.
Tyler: Great example.
Rob: Yeah, we should all watch some HBO, go to Target, we get some KFC and we'll have a great afternoon.
Elena: It sounds great actually.
Rob: I'll eat some KFC in front of HBO all day long. Actually, that's what I'm gonna do tonight in my Target slippers.
Elena: Oh my gosh. Well, Tyler, thank you so much for joining us. This was amazing getting to talk to you. Where can people follow you and learn more about you and your research?
Tyler: You can find me at Villanova. I'm on the Villanova website. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Happy to talk to anybody, everybody about this kind of stuff. So I greatly appreciate the opportunity to share some of my thoughts and research with you all today, and it's been fun. A lot of fun.
Angela: Thanks so much, Tyler.
Rob: As someone who has two kids in college, I hope they have fun professors like you. You set a great standard.
Tyler: Very kind. Thank you very much.
Episode 148
The Risks of Brand Activism with Professor Tyler Milfeld
When brands try to stand out through purpose or activism, they often stumble into controversy. So what's driving these missteps? And how should brands respond when backlash strikes?
This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Professor Tyler Milfeld from Villanova School of Business to discuss the hidden risks of brand activism and repositioning. Tyler unpacks why high-profile rebrands fail, when purpose messaging actually works, and how brands should respond when they face backlash. Plus, learn why doing nothing might be better than apologizing.
Topics Covered
• [04:00] Why most repositioning efforts fail
• [09:00] The credibility gap in brand purpose
• [12:00] When pro-social brands don't benefit from purpose ads
• [18:00] How brand power changes the rules for activism
• [21:00] The worst response to brand activism backlash
• [29:00] Why great insights matter more than shiny objects
• [32:00] Marketing communication needs more fun
Resources:
2025 MediaPost Article
Villanova University Page
Tyler Milfeld’s LinkedIn
Today's Hosts
Elena Jasper
Chief Marketing Officer
Rob DeMars
Chief Product Architect
Angela Voss
Chief Executive Officer
Tyler Milfeld
Assistant Professor of Marketing at Villanova University
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Transcript
Tyler: Having a good foundation in quant is really essential, but I think some of these things are kind of like shiny objects and at the core of marketing, I always tell folks is a really great insight drives great marketing, and I think sometimes we forget that and it gets lost in these shiny objects.
Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product architect of Misfits and Machines.
Rob: Hello.
Angela: Hey guys.
Elena: We're joined by a special guest professor Tyler Milfeld from Villanova School of Business. Tyler is a former senior brand manager who spent time on the brand side at companies like Hershey, Hills Pet, and PepsiCo. Tyler's research focuses on how brands communicate purpose, specifically when social purpose, sustainability, and brand activism actually build credibility and when they might trigger skepticism or backlash. His work has been published in leading journals like the Journal of Advertising and Journal of Product and Brand Management, and he's presented his research at conferences like the American Academy of Advertising. Tyler, thanks so much for joining us.
Tyler: Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Rob: Now Tyler, I have to make a confession. I really don't like cats. I think they're sneaky and I think they have an agenda. Now, you on the other hand, while working at Hills Pet Nutrition were actually involved in creating an eighth day of the week just dedicated to cats called Catter Day. Now, was this beyond a professional endeavor? Are you a big cat lover? And is Catter Day still recognized in some cat lover circles as an official day?
Tyler: Rob, I love that we're going back into the archives. That's actually one of my proudest moments in marketing is the creation of Catter Day, along with the fantastic folks at Petco, but I have to confess, I'm not a cat lover. We have a beagle. She's fun, she's spirited, she's energetic. I think she's trying to beat down the door over here just to get in as we speak. But Catter Day was something that really resonated a lot with the cat fans, the cat lovers, and when we introduced it, it was such a hit that we just kept doing and building different things to make it fun for all the cat lovers out there. So I hope that it still lives on in some form out there somewhere, but it is one of my proudest marketing moments for sure.
Rob: So it sounds like it was an idea that not only had legs, it had four legs.
Tyler: It had four legs. Correct. And depending on how many cats you have, it could have like 20 legs or 24.
Rob: That's true.
Elena: Oh my gosh. Funny, Tyler. We don't need to get into this now 'cause this could turn into a whole episode, but my parents have a beagle and they're funny dogs. They're very special animals.
Tyler: My wife uses that word to describe our beagle very often, that she's special. She's special when she jumps up on the table and eats food. She's special when she tries to leap and grab food out of our kids' hands. They're older now, so they just pat her down, but she is a special one for sure.
Elena: Yes. Oh my gosh. Funny. Well, thanks again for joining us today. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And I'm gonna kick us off how I always do with a piece of research, lots of options here for Tyler. But I chose an article that he wrote for media posts recently, and it's titled "What Drives Brand Repositioning And Why Do Those Efforts Fail?" In it, Tyler looks at why so many high profile rebrands and repositioning efforts sometimes struggle, and it's not for the reasons most marketers assume. Instead of focusing on logos or your messaging, this article zooms out to the underlying forces that push brands to reposition in the first place and how often those forces can be misunderstood or oversimplified. I thought it was a nice reframe of why these efforts tend to fail sometimes, and they can fail publicly, and they can be very expensive for the brands that undergo them. That's just a small snapshot of the thinking that Tyler brings to marketing effectiveness, and so we're excited to dig into it more today. But let's start there with rebrands, 'cause what a fun topic at the highest level. Tyler, why do so many high profile rebrands and sort of reposition efforts seem to fail? And what are brands typically getting wrong before they ever go about changing something like a logo, a color, a message?
Tyler: I've been a part of several repositioning efforts and they're hard things to do, right? They're more complex than I think most consumers realize because of so many different brand touchpoints. And when I think about why repositioning fails, I have four Rs that I often think about. So we'll stick with kind of repositioning and four different Rs. And I think it all starts with the first R, which is resistance. Consumers don't like change unless they're motivated to change. We're in a new year now, it's 2026. Folks are motivated to do all sorts of changes. The gyms are crowded. People are eating healthier, but they're motivated to do those things. Brands are motivated to change because it's in their best interests to be relevant. At the same time, consumers, particularly the ones who love the brand, don't see a need to change. So you've got some initial inertia there. I think the second R is about replacement. And unlike product innovation where you have your Reese's and your Reese's with all sorts of other ingredients over here that you can add across the portfolio, brand positioning replaces—a new brand position replaces the old, right? So two personalities, two brand positions don't exist at the same time. So consumers naturally compare what they see now and frankly, what they generally like to where it's going, and that resistance again, creates some inertia. So it's one of those situations where there's a natural comparison or contrast that happens that doesn't always work in the brand's favor. And then I'll talk about the other two Rs from my own experience in marketing. I think one of the big things is what I call relativity. As marketers, we spend a ton of time thinking, living, breathing the brand, whether it's the Hershey's brand, the Hills PET brand, Science Diet, whatever it might be, and often forget the consumers spend a fraction of that time thinking about our brand. So when you go into repositioning, you're spending months, years, thousands of dollars just trying to unpack kind of what this new repositioning could be. And it's often behind closed doors and you kind of sit in the office and you think about, should we do it this way? Should we call it this? Should we call it that? Do we like this word? Do we like that word? And then all of a sudden there's a grand reveal at the end. And again, consumers didn't really see a need for the change, but you've been a part of this for months, years, sometimes even longer. So there's a relative imbalance in terms of the amount of time you've spent and what your consumers have, which is virtually none. And I think one of the things that brands can do now that is really cool and helps you get feedback better, earlier, faster than ever before is to use synthetic data. When you're trying to think about these different positioning efforts, create a persona, use some prompts, and get much more initial feedback than waiting for the traditional consumer research and waiting till you're much further down. And the last one is rigidity. I think as marketers, particularly when you've lived on a brand for a while, you have a vision for it, as you very well should. And I remember at one of my stops along the way, it was very clear where the executive leadership team wanted to take this brand. They developed some creative and they were going to launch this thing regardless of what consumers said. They didn't like what we knew from consumer research, they went ahead with it, trying to move the brand in new direction. It was an incredible failure, not surprisingly, but I think that rigidity can really harm repositioning efforts, right? You think you know where you want to go, but sometimes consumers aren't ready for it again. They're not ready for change. And all of those things can contribute to repositioning failures.
Elena: Yeah, so interesting. Kind of a sunk cost fallacy, like you've worked on it for so long, they're like, we're just gonna do it no matter what. No, it's super interesting and helps explain how sometimes these rebrands come out and as a marketer and a consumer, you're thinking, how in the world did you get here? But if you're working on the brand and in the brand, it could be a very different story. One other thing that is often commented on from brands and marketers is brand purpose. Sometimes that seems to come outta nowhere from certain brands and people can be very critical of that. And we have talked about brand purpose on the show before, and in past conversations we have been fairly skeptical of how it's used in marketing. But I think I'm really interested in your perspective because it's more nuanced. So based on your research, why does purpose—and I like to say purpose sort of broadly defined, not just tied to social causes—why can it feel like such an attractive solution when brands are under this pressure to evolve? And where do brands most often get it wrong when they do decide to activate it?
Tyler: So when you think about positioning, right? You think about being different and being relevant. And brand purpose really became in vogue, maybe in the last five or so years. It was kind of one of the words of the year. It encapsulates, as you pointed out, Elena, a lot more than just social purpose, but that's kind of been its foundational identity is—we're going to get involved in the social purpose space as a brand. And as brands have started to see this tide of consumers who've expressed greater interest in what brands do in terms of doing good for society, it's become this shortcut to relevance. When you think about, oh, what are people talking about in society? Well, they're talking about social issues. They're talking about sustainability. They're talking about this, they're talking about that. Why don't we try to insert ourselves in that so we can become more relevant as a brand? And I think that's where brands have really started to see that as, okay, maybe we can just become relevant through this particular lens. It's no different than one of the things, as an educator, you always ask yourself, how can I be relevant to my students? And one thing you could think about is, well, maybe I should talk about the TV shows that they watch. And I could do that, right? I could walk in and I could start talking about Gossip Girl, which a lot of students love, but I know nothing about it. I know absolutely nothing about it. I know a lot about How I Met Your Mother, but I know nothing about Gossip Girl. So when brands try to insert themselves in ways where they don't have a history, they don't have credibility, just in an effort to be relevant, it comes across as just odd, like me talking about Gossip Girl. So I think as a brand, there are so many more other ways to be relevant, right? It's not just through social issues. It's not just through brand activism, it's through your products. It's through meeting consumers where they are and where they are in their lives and other things that they want in their lives. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get deeper into our conversation today.
Elena: Yeah. I love how you describe it as like this credibility gap. I thought that was a nice way to position some of those challenges. Another part of your research that I thought was really interesting was you found that brands that have an established pro-social reputation, they don't always see an immediate lift from purpose advertising at all. So why is that? And then if that's the case, what's the strategic role then would purpose play for those brands?
Tyler: Okay, so I'm gonna answer that question but I'm gonna put you on the spot for a second. Okay. So my first question for you all of the day is when you think about a brand that has a pro-social reputation, don't overthink it. What is the first one that comes to mind?
Elena: Patagonia. I'm wearing it.
Tyler: Right? So inevitably we've asked this question to hundreds, maybe thousands of consumers along the way. Patagonia is one. Can you guess what some of the others are that come to mind?
Rob: I was actually gonna go with Pepsi.
Tyler: Pepsi that comes up a little bit, but not as much as a couple big ones.
Angela: Pepsi got in trouble.
Rob: That's why it came to, that's why it came to mind.
Elena: I was gonna say like Ben and Jerry's.
Angela: Yeah.
Rob: Oh, Ben and Jerry's, definitely. That's a good one.
Tyler: Ben and Jerry's. So Ben and Jerry's, Seventh Generation is another one. So these brands have cultivated a reputation for social purpose and when consumers think about these brands, they think about social purpose. When you think about Breyers, when you think about some of the others in those categories, they don't have that reputation. And we just talked a minute ago about the credibility gap. So when a brand like Ben and Jerry's, or Seventh Generation or Patagonia launches a pro-social message, compared to a brand like Breyer's or a brand in the category that doesn't, there is a credibility gap. So let's just start there. Ben and Jerry's versus Breyer's would have an advantage when communicating a pro-social message because consumers perceive them to be more credible. At the same time though, I'll use this example since we're coming off the holidays and we'll bring in Rob for a second. So if you think about your holidays and you think about someone who's particularly generous, like Uncle Rob, we'll call him Uncle Rob over here. And every Christmas Rob gives everyone in his family a hundred dollars gift card and he's been doing this for years. You seem like a generous guy.
Rob: Absolutely. I just throw 'em at 'em, like
Tyler: You just, you're just throwing gift cards left and right. They're coming, you got pockets full of them, so Rob's giving out gift cards left and right. He's been doing this for 20 years. When you see Rob doing this for the 20th Christmas in a row, do you like him more? Probably not right? You think to yourself like, this is kind of what he does. This is his thing. It helps entrench his reputation as a generous guy, but doesn't make you like him more. And I think that's the distinction that we're talking about with brands with a pro-social reputation. Patagonia, Seventh Generation can keep launching these pro-social messages. In the short term, it doesn't make people like them more. It gives them an advantage versus brands that don't. But it adds to that schema that people have now. How brands can get you—brands like that can get you to like them more is they can expand what it means to be generous or pro-social, to expand that overall sphere of influence or tent. So then it adds other nodes to your schema of that particular brand.
Angela: I love this conversation so much. We're right on the edge of like behavioral psychology, which these guys know as like a major love topic of mine. But like the example you gave and you can see the eye roll that happens in the community when there's so much talk about purpose. Auntie Elena shows up in year 10 with a hundred dollars gift cards right next to Uncle Rob and you can just see the eye roll that happens. Like that was Uncle Rob's thing. Like, what are you even doing? Right.
Rob: Auntie Elena.
Angela: So Tyler, with the research you've done on sustainability messaging, I'm curious what you've learned about how these messages land across a broad consumer base versus maybe among people who do seem to be more values driven.
Tyler: Yeah, so I'll give you the really short, maybe couple minute response to this. So if you think about consumers, they're high value, high issue knowledge, high involvement consumers versus lower issue knowledge, lower environmental concern consumers. So if you think about that as a spectrum, along that particular spectrum, the way you talk to those consumers is very different. And we've done a bunch of studies that have unpacked some really core insights. So for the folks that are really super involved, super knowledgeable about those issues, those are the ones that actually scrutinize the message more. And in the case of brand activism, when they would see a brand like Breyers launching into a discussion about whatever sociopolitical issue it was, and they're the ones who are really knowledgeable about it, they're the ones who are most likely to punish the brand and say, wait a second, this is not your thing. You don't have a history of this. I don't see you as credible at all. So for those folks that are really involved, they tend to like it, but they're also very discerning. If you shift to the other end of the spectrum, the folks who are less involved just care a lot less. One of the big things we found with them is that less is more. One of my colleagues and I did this really cool research project about tips. So it's the time of the year where you get tips for different things and on Earth Day brands—weak brands would do this kind of thing, right? Here's one tip to live a greener life. Here's five tips, here's 30 tips, here's a thousand tips. And we thought to ourself, I wonder how many is the optimal amount to engage folks into those tips and maybe make them want to do one of them or a couple of them. And it turns out, again, for the folks on the high side, they love all of them. They love one, they love three, they love a thousand. But for folks on the low side who are less concerned, less involved, less is more. One tip is much better for them versus three, versus five versus seven, versus any other number that we tested. So when you think about consumers, think about that particular spectrum and the different messaging that may resonate with them.
Angela: Do you think that brand power changes the rules for these companies? Do large or category leading brands maybe get more forgiveness when they do take a stand? Or conversely, are they actually held to a higher standard because they do have that brand power?
Tyler: 100%. I think brand power factors into this equation in a very significant way, and if you think about the brands that have emerged in the media for their social issue stances, their sociopolitical stances, what you've seen are the big brands, Targets of the world, amongst some others because those brands not only are big and they're under the microscope, but we'll also have more established schemas of them. So we've talked about schemas as part of this discussion. They kind of know when they think of Target, it has these series of characteristics, and when brand activism doesn't really fit, it creates a disconnect for them. So brand power, I think those bigger brands are held to a different standard. And one of the expressions that I don't love—I know we'll talk about some contrarian things later, but one expression that I don't love is that we have a voice and so we're going to use it. And I think some folks have misinterpreted that to say, oh, that means we have an audience and we're a big brand, we should take a stand on a social issue. But that's no different than me saying I have a room full of students, I wanna share my opinion about Gossip Girl when I know nothing about it. Maybe I learned something. I listened to a podcast about it. One of my students told me something, but I'm not credible in that particular space, and that's exactly what consumers think when these big brands insert themselves, unless they've had a reputation like a Ben and Jerry's, like a Patagonia, it just comes across as disingenuous.
Rob: I don't want an Earth Day tip from a chicken sandwich company.
Tyler: That's right.
Angela: Well, you can see the challenge of being a big brand then, because we talk a lot on the podcast about how brands grow through reach and creating relevance with as many consumers as you possibly can for a variety of reasons. So a brand like Coke or a brand like Pepsi, like everyone needs to know them. And so you've got all of these potential segments of customers that care about different things. What do I even talk about? Maybe just the product. That's your product's good enough. Let's talk a little bit about brands that have gotten into a bit of trouble. I think we all probably have an example we can think of. Could be Pepsi, could be Bud Light, could be your own. But when brands do find themselves in trouble, whether it's backlash, controversy, cultural pressure, what does the research suggest that leaders should be thinking about before they respond?
Tyler: So I'll give a quick shout out to my colleagues, Jenny and Courtney, who we worked together on this particular question. How should brands respond to brand activism backlash? They're the brains behind the operation. I'll be the face of it today, so I'll do my best to summarize our findings. There's been a lot of research that has shown when brands take a stand that there is some backlash or it negatively affects people's attitudes toward the brand. So we asked ourselves and said, well, wait a second. We know that how a brand ultimately responds may change the way people think about the brand positively or negatively. So when you think about how brands typically respond to backlash in this sociopolitical arena, what do they typically do?
Angela: I think they usually back down.
Tyler: Yeah, they back down.
Elena: You get one of those long statements that they post on Instagram.
Tyler: Yes. You have a long statement and they back down. So we call that retraction. Target, for example, said, Hey, wait a second, we're going to withdraw these products and put them online. A lot of brands say that, just kidding. We didn't really mean that. We take everything back and we're bringing it back to our corporate office.
Rob: Catter Day.
Tyler: Right, and we're gonna rethink it. So it turns out that is actually the worst thing that a brand can do, because what happens is the people who were upset with you to begin with are still mad, right? They still disagree with your stance, and now you've upset the apple cart on the other side. Were the people who were with you before now look at it and say, wait a second. You didn't really mean it. You're not standing behind it. It wasn't really a genuine stance. So now you have both camps that see your brand in the firestorm, so it actually fuels the flames or fans the flames and makes things worse. So we looked at what are some other strategies that might be effective, and it turns out, which was one of our most fascinating findings, that doing nothing at all is better than retraction. Doing nothing at all is very similar to doubling down and saying, wait a second. You know what? Maybe you didn't hear us the first time. We still stand behind this. This is what we believe is equally effective as not responding and moving back to product oriented messaging. The one thing that we also found is that if you are going to retract, it can be effective and reduce perceptions of hypocrisy if there is some sort of basic need, like when you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, some basic need that you can appeal to. Like Target talked about safety. We are going to pull this because of concerns about employee safety. In that case, retraction actually becomes effective. But if you just retract it like Elena was talking about with these long statements and say, we didn't really mean it, we apologize, that does not work at all.
Angela: So I'm curious then, this is a little off the cuff here, but what's your perspective on the Cracker Barrel retraction? Like that one to me, we've all seen poor retraction done where you're like, you should have just said nothing. That's even worse now that you've opened your mouth and responded to it versus the way they went about it. I don't know. It felt a little, maybe like it turned in their direction. What's your perspective?
Tyler: Yeah, so it's interesting because we looked at crises more broadly and what we found is like a repositioning, brand marketing crisis is very different than a brand crisis.
Angela: Okay, sure.
Tyler: How you handle those is very different. And what we found is that brands tend to revert to their regular crisis management strategies when they think about brand activism. But those things don't work. Like retraction doesn't work. It may work, for example, when you have a product that has a quality issue, right? You want to retract it, you wanna apologize. That makes a ton of sense, exactly what you should do. Every crisis management book in the world would say that's exactly what you wanna do. When you apply that into this context, it has a very different outcome. So the way that you communicate your response is very different.
Angela: That makes sense. So if A CMO is considering purpose or sustainability as a part of a broader brand shift, what should they figure out before doing anything publicly?
Tyler: So one of the things that we've looked at is this difference between showing versus telling. A lot of brands come out and say, our mission is this, our purpose is this. We believe that, right? Those are telling statements. I think what a brand should think about before they start to enter the purpose discussion is look into the brand, look into the history, look into the past and say, what have we done that we could use as an anchor? As we potentially move into this space, what can we show consumers that we've done that we've demonstrated that gives us a right to move into this particular arena? And then in the present, think about the products and services and how they connect to that so it becomes a more integrated enterprise and doesn't appear just a one-off mission statement. And then in the future, think about, as we talked about earlier in this discussion, how you can build some different layers or nodes alongside what you've used as this anchor so that it becomes a little bit more of a natural essence of the brand. And you can see the brand's history as feeding into where it wants to go in the future.
Angela: It's essentially just a thoughtful approach to, do we have credibility or how do we make it real or is it real, the desire that we have? And then how do we ensure that it shows up as real? Love that.
Rob: It's all a bit spicy. Your research is so interesting. I think because it has a bit of an edge to it and you have to translate this research into something that marketers are able to use. What's it really like publishing marketing research, especially when it does challenge how marketers think about how things like purpose or brand activism work?
Tyler: Well, it takes a lot of patience because the publication timeline in academia is really long, and when you think about things that are super relevant, like purpose, we may start a project two years ago, and now it finally makes its way into a publication because that's just the nature of the peer review process, which has a lot of positive merits to it. But I think that also gives us, at least when we start a project, the idea to think about, okay, how can we ensure this is going to have a shelf life? And it's not just a passing fad, but things that can apply to broader principles of marketing. When you think about purpose, when you think about positioning, those kinds of things that will stand the test. But I love doing research in this particular area. It might surprise you. I don't go in with particular opinions one way or the other. I have a hypothesis about what might happen, but it never ceases to amaze me that consumers surprise us, right? It happened when I worked in marketing. It happens now, or sometimes the hypothesis comes back and it's unsupported, or the data has moved in a different direction, and I think that's the fun part. You start to create insight from the data and let the data tell you what's going on with this particular issue.
Rob: Let the data rule. You have two different audiences in your profession as a professor, right? You have the marketers who obviously love to read what you have studied, but you also have the students, right? So when you think about the classroom and your perspective as an educator, how do you feel about marketing, the state of marketing and all these kids who are looking to you to understand what the world is gonna look like? How do you express that to them? What worries you about how marketing is being practiced today?
Tyler: I tell my students that there's never been a better time to get into marketing. I feel like it's such a dynamic environment. There's so many opportunities out there, tech's driving it in ways, in faster ways than it ever has before. With the use of AI and synthetic data, the stuff that we've talked about, you have programmatic advertising. I mean, you have all sorts of really cool things that are happening, so you have the tech side. You've also got the quant side. We've never had more access to data, so I always tell my students as well, having a good foundation in quant is really essential, but I think some of these things are kind of like shiny objects and at the core of marketing, I always tell folks is a really great insight drives great marketing, and I think sometimes we forget that and it gets lost in these shiny objects. I'm a long distance runner. I love running and there's one campaign that I always think about that truly resonated with me and we're gonna flash back. You flashed back to Catter days earlier, Rob. So I'm gonna flash back even before that. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it was an Adidas campaign that talked about, that targeted serious runners and the headline was, "Yeah, we're different." And it showed a runner stretching at the bank, spitting on the side of the road. It showed someone's office with bibs on full display. I have no idea where my PhD diploma is, but I know exactly where all my bibs are. Right? And as soon as I saw that campaign, I was like, oh, they get me, right? This brand understands me in a way that others don't. It was a really great insight, and one of the things I emphasize with my students is that it all starts with a really great data-driven insight. Talk about celebrities or influencers and all this stuff, but without a really great insight, your marketing will be okay. It might actually cut through the clutter, but what cuts through the clutter is a really great insight. And I teach marketing research, so I love teaching that class because you really look at all the different ways that you can get to an insight. And those, while some of the use of AI and those other technologies have accelerated that process, it hasn't changed the fundamentals of it.
Rob: You make me wanna get into marketing. You've got a good speech there to the kids. We always ask this question. We like to get it extra spicy. What's your most contrarian marketing opinion?
Tyler: So I was gonna talk about one, but it came up in an earlier podcast episode. But I will offer something else that might be a little contrarian. Authenticity is not a word that I love. I think we have beaten that word down to all sorts of different dimensions. I was reading an article the other day. It had like 35 dimensions of authenticity. It's like, I think we're making this more complex than it needs to be. Right. Authenticity is, are you doing what I think you should be doing, saying what I think you should be saying based on what I know about you? So I think authenticity has become a big buzzword in marketing, but I think a word that we're missing in marketing is actually fun. And my, I guess my contrarian view is I think marketing communication—not the practice of marketing, but marketing communication—used to be more fun. We live in an era where everything's, I mean, it's gray outside today, I'm looking outside my window. It's gray. There's just not as much color. Purpose, sustainability, like those are serious things. Brands have gotten themselves inserted into really serious things, but marketing I think has the chance to be a really bright light and add fun to people's days. I was looking through my email earlier today. How many marketing emails do you get a day?
Elena: So many.
Tyler: So many, right? And a lot of them say the same thing. I got one from Goodr, the sunglasses company that absolutely made my day. It started with greeting me "Ahoy Tyler," which I thought was so fun. Right? Who says that? But I was like, oh, I wanna see what they're talking about. And they started talking about flamingos and I don't really remember what it was, but I remember it was super fun. I remember it kind of made my day and it made me super excited to wear these sunglasses when I run, which are also super fun. That is kind of an outlier, right? Most brand communication, most marketing communication is pretty serious, pretty standard. It kind of stays in a box. I think brands try to spice it up to use kind of Rob's term with celebrities, things like that. But at the core, I think marketing can be more fun. Whenever I go in to teach a class, now the students don't always perceive it this way, but I always say to myself, I wanna do one fun thing today in class. Maybe it's fun for just me, but I'm gonna have a good time doing this one fun thing. And I think marketers should think about that too. When you send out an email, when you're doing some kind of communication with your customers, what is something fun that you can add? And I think that's a real opportunity in the marketing space.
Elena: I agree. That's a great one. I think some of that comes from just this fear of getting things wrong now too, where you end up with TV commercials and messaging that just gets so watered down because you're afraid of making anybody upset. But I like the reframe to think about how do we inject fun.
Tyler: And I'll say one more thing on that note too. So my colleague Matthew Pittman, I'll give him a shout out too. So we did some research on fun and one of the things that we found was when particularly when we were talking to consumers and interviewed them, it was hard for them to come up with examples of fun advertising and fun brand communication. Like it took longer than you would hope or you would think, and we distilled fun into some different types and had a great time doing it, but that was really eye-opening for us.
Angela: Were you also asking them about sad communication or angry communication, or was it just focused on fun?
Tyler: We only focused on fun, but I'd be willing to bet that they'd be able to come up with examples faster on a lot of other things. And you know what? I think we're gonna do that. We'll compare how salient fun is versus some other ideas. So we're gonna take that, we're gonna go back into the lab. We'll do some of that and maybe I'll come back on and I'll share with you what we found.
Elena: Yeah, that sounds great. This has been amazing. I've learned so much. You're such a great communicator and the research is so interesting. I wanna wrap up with kind of a fun question. I guess it's fun for us as people who love marketing research. Tyler, what is a brand repositioning or a rebrand that you personally think worked really well? I think we often talk about the negatives, but what's one that you think is an example of it going right?
Tyler: So I'll give you two as we close our conversation today. Both were very prevalent in the Milfeld family Christmas. So the first is Lego, and I think Lego has done a remarkable job of repositioning themselves in an era where phones are prevalent and a major distraction, right? Everyone always has their phone with them. And Lego faced this dilemma years ago and had a lot of pushback that said, Hey, you know what, you're not gonna compete with video games. You gotta, you actually have to get online. You have to embrace that particular space. And they did some research which found that folks actually wanna break from all that and they want to have these moments of play and creativity. And it's actually not just kids, but it's adults too. And I will tell you, my son and I were building Legos a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know who had more fun. I think I actually had more fun because Lego was actually now positioned not only for kids, but for adults, but all around this idea of play, which was deep in the brand's history. The other example that I think is also really good is Garmin. So when you think about Garmin, most people would think about it as those GPS devices that you have in your car, right? It would sit on the dashboard and it would tell you where to go, and as that became—or that gave way, it became outdated. It gave way to some other devices like your phones. Garmin had to reposition and so they used that strength that they had about tracking and move themselves into the outdoor fitness space. I have to tell you, I have a Garmin watch. Actually, this is my second one, so I'll thank my family. They gave me one for Christmas. I love this thing. I absolutely love this watch. It tracks so many different aspects of the day and of running, but they leveraged what they were known for and their strengths about tracking, pinpoint tracking and transitioned it into the outdoor space where people wanted to track their runs or their walks or their hikes or whatever it is, and they have done a masterful job in that. When you think about Garmin watches now, and they have them for all different price points, they have all different features, but I think it really speaks to the brand saying, okay, well we're not gonna be in this particular space anymore, but there is a transferable point of difference that we can apply into some other areas. And I think at the heart of both of those, as we opened our conversation today, is the brand thinking about who are we? Who are we fundamentally and leveraging that particular strength or that particular node as you move into the future. So it becomes a much more seamless transition, and that's where some of the brands have not done as well, is because you have that contrast effect, new versus old. It doesn't really represent anything from the old, so it gets lost for consumers.
Angela: That's such a great example. You can hear the board debates over, I think we should take on Apple in the smartwatch category, right? You're like, yeah.
Elena: Rob wants to.
Rob: You know what? Mine's a history lesson, which just felt appropriate since we're talking to a professor, but I grew up in the eighties. All right, so I'm a little older. And in the eighties, Target was a store that you went to to buy detergent and socks. You would never in a million years think it was cool. You would never buy their clothes unless you wanted to get teased at school. And it was in the late nineties when they said, we're never gonna be able to continue to compete on price against Walmart and Kmart, affectionately called, came apart. So they needed a pivot and really bring design into their brand imaging. I mean, now everyone says Tarjé, but believe me, nobody said Tarjé back in the late eighties. So that was a pretty amazing brand pivot. When you think about just repositioning, they brought on amazing designers like Michael Graves and just really introduced a whole new positioning of value.
Tyler: That's a great example. And you're right. I mean, Target's journey, Target's evolution is pretty impressive.
Rob: It is, and then they of course got caught up in the cause marketing stuff themselves, so you know,
Angela: Gotta stay on the right track. All right. I'm taking us to food from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC. I love that they didn't try to reinvent themselves or bolt on some higher purpose. They just doubled down and got radically clear about who they already were during a time where people were getting very health conscious, health forward. And they just said, Nope, we're gonna be who we are. We've got a distinctive asset in the Colonel, we're gonna stick with it. And they brought in some sort of absurd humor. It worked. It worked for me.
Elena: Mine's a little, maybe, I dunno if it's controversial, but this brand I think is known for horrible rebrands, which is HBO. You know, they went to HBO Go, HBO Max. No, but listen, bear with me. And they had all these different Maxes and if you look at their logos, it's crazy. Like all the different logos they had, Maxes and all these different colors. And last year they went back, they brought back their original colors. And I think there's bravery in that. And we've changed—you can imagine like we've changed so much. How do you pitch it again? But somebody did and they brought them back to, I know we talked about Tyler, you were talking about how do you bring the old with the new and I'm hoping now they've got it. I think the place they're at today is better. But that does take courage to be willing to make another pivot. But I think where they're at today seems a lot more like they're bringing back the roots of the brand and hopefully they're able to stick with it.
Tyler: Great example.
Rob: Yeah, we should all watch some HBO, go to Target, we get some KFC and we'll have a great afternoon.
Elena: It sounds great actually.
Rob: I'll eat some KFC in front of HBO all day long. Actually, that's what I'm gonna do tonight in my Target slippers.
Elena: Oh my gosh. Well, Tyler, thank you so much for joining us. This was amazing getting to talk to you. Where can people follow you and learn more about you and your research?
Tyler: You can find me at Villanova. I'm on the Villanova website. You can also find me on LinkedIn. Happy to talk to anybody, everybody about this kind of stuff. So I greatly appreciate the opportunity to share some of my thoughts and research with you all today, and it's been fun. A lot of fun.
Angela: Thanks so much, Tyler.
Rob: As someone who has two kids in college, I hope they have fun professors like you. You set a great standard.
Tyler: Very kind. Thank you very much.