Bad Publicity Sucks, but Getting Canceled is Worse

In today’s society a viral video can either make or break you, going viral is always the goal but it’s equally as important to ensure that you’re going viral for the right reasons. When we post any sort of content it’s always with the hopes that someone will see it, have some sort of engagement, share it, and hopefully the cycle keeps repeating itself until the video goes viral. We hope to gain attention from consumers and hopefully this attention leads to something more whether it’s a purchase, follow, or even a bookmark depending on what it is. Going viral can help your business immensely, but can’t it also hurt it? I mean think about it, one wrong word, offensive comment, joke taken the wrong way and you’re being “canceled” in today’s culture.

How brands decide to respond to these negative comments and reviews of their viral videos also plays a huge factor when it comes to “cancel culture”. Some brands continually dig a hole for themselves trying to defend, justify, or even attempt to reason with consumers about why they made their videos. This can cause several once loyal customers to “jump ship” and even potentially boycott the company. This leads to a PR nightmare, drop in profit and stocks, the list goes on. While other brands take accountability, maybe even apologize, and try to do better moving forward in order to ensure that there are no lasting negative impacts on their products or services being offered, take Rhode Skin for example.

Rhode Beauty Vs Golloria

Take Rhode Skin by Hailey Bieber and the Golloria incident for example, if you’re not sure what I’m talking about see for yourself: Golloria Rhode Blush Review. When Golloria came out with her review of the new Rhode blushes TikTok was in disarray, between the review itself, the quality and pigment of the blushes, not to mention the backlash Rhode received for the lack of inclusivity of their blushes in 2024 it was all a bit chaotic. Her review sparked so much controversy, other negative reviews from content creators of color because the blushes simply did not suite people of color despite the company’s claim that it was for all skin tones.

Fortunately for Rhode they didn’t let one bad viral video be the reason why their business failed. Instead, they chose to take accountability, apologize, go back in the lab and figure out where they went wrong. Hailey Bieber even took it upon herself to not only call Golloria and apologize, but to also invite her to the lab as a tester so that they could formulate the product better. Golloria ensured to note all of this in her second review of the products once the formula was corrected: Rhode Skin Redemption Review.

Don’t get canceled because you went viral

How a company chooses to handle negative publicity and embarrassing or fatal viral moments is completely up to them and their teams, but in my opinion it’s better to learn from your mistakes while you still can. While Rhode skin did, in my opinion, a great job at turning what could have been a bad PR nightmare into a story about redemption and second chances, some brands don’t always go that route. It’s important to always consider the potential effects (positive and negative) of any content that is put out in the world and always be prepared to handle any potential backlash because who really wants to get canceled simply because their mistakes went viral?