How to issue an actual brand apology

Is it too late to apologize? These are some steps to consider when deciding if and when a brand needs to say sorry—or if it should sit one out and not make it worse.

October 21, 2026

• 26 min read

TOPICS: Brand Strategy / Purpose, Ethics, & Responsibility / Crisis Communications

Every brand wants to make a splash. Then there’s the splash that turns out to be a mistake.

In this episode of Marketing Brew Weekly, Jennimai Nguyen and Kelsey Sutton unpack brand apologies from Target, Converse, Good Good Golf, Neutrogena, and Cracker Barrel.

They break down when a brand should apologize, when it should stand firm, and what separates a public apology people accept from one that adds fuel to the fire.

Key takeaways

Match your response to the severity. On serious issues, silence reads as an endorsement, and waiting for the news cycle to cool can reignite the backlash.
Intentional stances don’t need apologies. Nike knew exactly who it was talking to in its 2018 Colin Kaepernick campaign. An apology only makes sense for a genuine mistake, not for backlash alone.
Keep it short and own it. The Target and Converse apologies worked because they said “we’re sorry,” took the content down fast, and offered no excuses. Skip the blame-shifting, the “if you were offended” hedging, and the Pepsi-style dodge around the real issue.
Pick your platform on purpose. Social gives you the most control but can feel like a Notes app apology. A media statement carries more weight. Either way, you don’t control sees it.
Check who’s actually upset. Cracker Barrel’s rebrand reversal shows the risks of apologizing for a smaller decision. Ask whether the noise is coming from your real customers or from people who were never going to buy.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

Jennimai: Welcome to Marketing Brew Weekly, Morning Brew Inc.’s podcast for the marketing industry. I’m Jennimai Nguyen.

Kelsey: And I’m Kelsey Sutton.

Jennimai: It is a brand’s job to constantly be perceived. Campaigns, social collabs, everything is meant to make a splash and get people talking.

But what happens when that splash is a big wet mistake?

There have been a couple of brand moments of late that have well been in poor taste, if we’re putting it mildly, to be honest.

Kelsey: Yeah, generous way to describe it.

Jennimai: Yeah. They’ve ranged honestly in their impact from resurfacing old mistakes that kind of has a different weight to it in the wake of current events, like in the case of Neutrogena to some really frankly, publicly accepted to be horrendous creative decisions and conceptual decisions like in the case of Good Good Golf and Callaway.

And each of these has resulted in a very public brand apology. And that’s the piece that really interests me today. And it’s a situation that technically any brand could find themselves in.

So Kelsey and I are going to take a microscope to some of these instances and the circumstances that specifically created them and hopefully help you determine what warrants a public apology.

And if you have to make one, what actually makes one that the public might accept.

Kelsey: I am so excited to get into this topic with you. It’s so ripe for discussion.

When should brands apologize, and when should they not?

Jennimai: Okay. So to properly talk about what makes a good brand apology, I think we need to take a step back and first take a look at what brands should be considering about when they need to say something versus when they should sit it out.

What makes a brand apology necessary in the first place?

So I feel like the first thing that has to happen is actually the public noticing that there has been some wrongdoing, right? Brands aren’t just going to apologize even if they might internally know that there’s something that wasn’t quite right. It always takes a pretty public reckoning before it becomes a PR crisis.

Kelsey: Yes. And the thing is that sounds like such a simple task is identifying public backlash.

There’s so many social listening tools, et cetera, but there’s also a question of, is that backlash valid?

We’ve talked about bot traffic and sort of automated ways in which a bad actor might try to amplify something into a crisis for various purposes. And so brands have to be really thoughtful about how they identify this, if the public backlash is real and is it sustained and how big is it actually? And of course, that’s a whole other conversation for another episode.

Jennimai: But worth considering for sure.

Kelsey: But I think it’s definitely worth talking about.

Jennimai: But usually when it gets big enough, you know this is a real public crisis and you have to address it in some way.

But I do think the first thing that brands need to consider is the severity of their wrongdoing in the first place.

What specific issue did it incorrectly handle and to what degree? And I think there are two recent examples that touch on hot button topics that kind of immediately demonstrate that there needed to be a valuation. And that is with Target’s Halloween costume and Good Good Golf and the ad that a lot of people said essentially depicted violence against women.

Kelsey: Yes. Yeah. In the case of Target, it seemed to be one of their retail media partners was selling a Halloween costume that sort of evoked minstrel shows, obviously a very dark history of racist imagery, et cetera. Not something that you just hope blows over, I think certainly.

And I think in the case of the Good Good ad, I think it kind of went from being maybe this offhanded kind of poorly thought through ad that then of course snowballed into something huge.

And I think it’s almost for a brand identifying the snowball and going, this is not going to...if we don’t say anything, it looks bad every moment that we don’t say anything. We need to address this as soon as possible to try to at least not wait until the conversation dials down, then say something and then it’s almost like re-inflames the thing.

It’s a timing thing. It’s really challenging.

Jennimai: And I think that again relates to the severity of the issue at hand because if it’s something that the general public is overall saying is a serious issue, the longer you wait to speak on something, the more it feels like you are maybe evading it or not accepting that there is a certain reaction from your customer base or just from the public at large.

And that creates an entire narrative that you’re not in control of as well.

Kelsey: I think a lot of consumers, particularly younger ones look at a brand’s behavior and what they say or what they don’t say as sort of tacit endorsement or not.

We know a lot of younger consumers are particularly looking at brands and saying, “I want to vote with my dollars. I want to support brands that only support my values.” And when a brand opts not to say something, you leave a lot of room for interpretation and that can be a lot of really negative interpretation.

I want to mention that there’s also kind of been another recent example, which was the case of Converse put out an ad that had a lot of imagery in the creative that a lot of people said this evokes KKK white supremacy imagery, lynching imagery, how did this get through, et cetera. And again, in a case like that, I would say extremely serious concerns, very immediate…and again, saying nothing…

Jennimai: Is an endorsement of sorts.

Kelsey: Yes. I think a lot of consumers say, “If you say nothing, that is, you’re saying everything I need to know by saying nothing.”

Jennimai: Right. Because you can’t then say that it was a mistake because if it’s a mistake, you should own up to that. And I think that is just an expectation of the way that consumers interact with brands today. That isn’t to say that there are cases where you can set out an apology.

The example that I think of, and actually I spoke to Professor Derek Rucker who teaches a marketing course and does research at Northwestern University, and he pointed to Nike as well as an interesting example of when to strategically not apologize for their 30th anniversary campaign in 2018.

They did this campaign with Colin Kaepernick and featured his voiceover and very prominently featured him throughout the ad as well. And that did spawn a lot of backlash, negative backlash at the time. And Nike did not apologize. And I think what is key in this case is it was purposeful.

They were taking a stand on racial justice and on where they stood with Colin Kaepernick. And there was nothing to apologize for because they were clear on where they stood on the subject and who they were trying to appeal to.

Whereas apologizing just because there was some type of backlash would say something else about the brand. And I think that’s an interesting thing to kind of remember depending on what controversy you have found yourself in.

Kelsey: Right. I think that’s such a good point. And I think that comparing the Nike ad to something like the Good Good Golf ad, I don’t think that Good Good Golf would say, “Oh, we are...” I don’t think that ad was intended to represent a broader statement about how this company feels about women in golf or in sports or anything like that.

And I think they certainly would not want that to be the message that is taken from an ad like that.

I think in the case of Nike, they knew sort of exactly what they were doing. Colin Kaepernick, of course, very polarizing figure in national football because of his decision to kneel during the national anthem, et cetera. There was a lot of conversation about that and a lot of very strong kind of division, I would say.

A lot of people were saying, “Why would you partner with somebody who’s so divisive?” And I think Nike was saying, “If we alienate the people who don’t like him, we’re fine with that. That’s fine.”

Jennimai: They were clear on their audience.

Kelsey: We know what our brand stands for, which is racial justice and equality and we’re just going to lean in and the conversation can happen and we’re maybe going into it clear-eyed knowing that that conversation is going to happen.

I think that’s such a key distinction is if you know what you’re putting out into the world and you anticipate some of the feedback and you’re prepared for that feedback, but that requires a lot of strategic foresight versus just saying, “Let’s quick, let’s get this approved. Let’s put it out there.”

And then the feedback rolls in and you’re kind of like, “Wait, how did we not notice this?” Or like, “Oh my God, we weren’t thinking about the greater conversation this might kick off at all.”

Jennimai: Right. I mean, we’re talking about apologies and it makes sense when you put it into that context because you only really need to apologize when you have made a mistake and you make a mistake when you haven’t thought ahead strategically to what those responses could be or what details might elicit some type of response.

And Nike obviously did do that and did not feel the need to apologize because it was purposeful. Whereas…

Kelsey: Like what would they apologize for?

Jennimai: Exactly.

Kelsey: There’s nothing to apologize for.

Jennimai: They went into that with intention. Ultimately, it’s the difference in between what people might perceive as a mistake versus an intentional brand stance. And that is something that you as a brand have to be really strong in if that’s what you’re trying to do.

What’s makes a good brand apology?

Jennimai: But let’s say you do find yourself in a situation where you do have to be sorry. Let’s break down kind of what elements make up a good apology or at least one that the public might be willing to accept one day.

We’ve kind of talked about speed already, but I think a piece of that is also sometimes brevity in both Target and Converse examples. They removed the content immediately and issued apology statements that were pretty short and sweet, essentially saying, “We’re sorry, this was wrong. We should not have done this. We will do better,” in both examples.

And I think that’s really interesting because it doesn’t make any excuses or bring up any additional context around it and accepts the wrongdoing right away.

I’m curious what you think the impact is there when it’s just to the point, “We’re sorry, we messed up.”

Kelsey: I think part of it is almost like getting ahead of the news cycle that it’s sort of saying, “Okay, wow, this was bad. We messed up.” No more additional context to feed additional conversation. “This was wrong. We’re taking it down. We apologize. Try to move on as quickly as we can.”

And I think you mentioned Neutrogena and their partnership with Hayden Panettiere was reevaluated after her death earlier this year, which of course was very tragic.

And a lot of something that she had said in an interview was that they basically stopped working with her because of her mental health challenges. And so they had to kind of revisit this sort of thing.

And I think something that was interesting about that is, again, a statement like, “We hear you. We will do better.” That kind of addressing.

But I’d like to know your thoughts there too, because I think to me, it’s the speed and it’s the genuine feeling.

Using the word sorry, it feels like such a simple thing, but saying this was wrong, we are changing it. I think the ownership of it feels a lot more genuine than trying to say…

Jennimai: Here are all the reasons why it happened.

Kelsey: Here’s the reasons why this happened or here we’re going to blame somebody else or et cetera, which I think can, again, create this sense of damage control rather than a genuine apology.

Jennimai: Yeah. I mean, as you said, it seems so simple, but specifically using the words like we’re sorry or I’m sorry, I think really does go a long way. And again, I think acknowledges the severity of what the public has decided has been wrongdoing, committed against someone.

And the Neutrogena example is interesting because it is an old mistake that has been brought up. And I think that could be a case where it’s easy to be like, “Oh, well that was a long time ago. Let’s just ignore that and hope that the news cycle goes away.”

But I do think it’s interesting that they chose to specifically address it and take responsibility for something that could have easily been ignored. So I think that the impact there is hopefully well received because it feels intentional, as you said.

Does it matter where a brand apologizes?

Kelsey: Yeah. I have a question for you, which is, do you think that the platform on which a brand apology goes out on matters?

And the reason I ask this is like, okay, it’s sort of the celeb notes app apology on Instagram sort of thing, but text posted on a visual feed.

Jennimai: A graphic.

Kelsey: Yeah, a graphic on Instagram or something versus a press release versus an interview…

Jennimai: A sit down with your CEO or whatever.

Kelsey: Apologize. There’s kind of different ways in which it might manifest. I’m wondering how you think about kind of where it lives.

Jennimai: Yeah, totally. This actually came up with Professor Rucker in our conversation, too. We kind of talked about how you do have to kind of thread this very delicate needle of you have to address the public’s reaction to something that you have done incorrectly, but if you address it too much, it might be drawing too much attention to the mistake and could keep that press cycle going for longer.

So I do think that something like a CEO or CMO sitting down for a whole interview is pretty rare. I don’t think I can think of an example off the top of my head where someone has done that in a very sincere manner.

Social media I think is the most common way that brands are posting their apologies these days for good reason. I think it is the platform that you as a brand have the most control over.

You can post your apology, you can control the comments section, you can also delete the apology at a later date if it has gone on for long enough.

Kelsey: Or like bury it with the other posts.

Jennimai: Exactly. Yeah. It’s like we did our part, but we don’t need to continuously remind people that this happened.

So I do think that it makes sense for those reasons, but I do think that it could also be a little less impactful because that’s kind of where all types of apologies happened.

As you said, jokingly, Notes app apologies do happen from influencers or just regular people. It does kind of diminish the seriousness. So it depends on what you are apologizing for.

I think also interestingly with Converse’s recent backlash, they went the route of providing their very short apology in a statement to media. It wasn’t on their social media. It doesn’t exist on their platforms today, but it was the same couple of lines across all of the media outlets.

And I do think there’s a little bit more of a gravitas with going like, okay, we’re going to ABC News and we know that this will go to the people that it needs to reach through the typical media ecosystem.

Kelsey: I think there’s also something interesting where the brand, if the brand apology makes somebody who wasn’t currently aware of the conversation around it aware of it, that kind of is maybe not necessarily what a brand wants to incentivize. So if I’m living in la la land and on Instagram like…

Jennimai: Haven’t heard about any of this!

Kelsey: Haven’t read the news, whatever. And then I see a statement that I might be like, “Wait, what is this about?” And that might actually create this other thing too.

So I think it’s a really interesting question for a brand because you have to kind of be thoughtful about where are people seeing this and kind of being aware of it and where would they see an apology, et cetera? And do I want to introduce, do I want that…

Jennimai: More people, yeah.

Kelsey: And also if you’re a brand, you do not control the algorithm, you do not control what people are shown on the For You page.

So if you post an apology and it goes super viral, then people might be aware of something that you are already trying to take away.

So in the case of Converse, they don’t want more people to see the offensive imagery that they’re already pulling, that they no longer have on their sites, et cetera.

And I’m sure they’ve been screenshot and documented for the end of time. But you don’t actually want to encourage somebody to seek that out because not only is it offensive if you look at it, but it’s also, they don’t want that recirculating.

So I think it’s kind of a really interesting kind of dance because I think at the same time, you do own the channels and you know what will be done if you post it there, but you don’t have the control.

Jennimai: Right. Definitely.

When is a brand apology overracting?

Kelsey: I want to talk about when you apologize and maybe the apology was sort of overreacting. I think in all the cases we’ve talked about, it’s either…

Jennimai: An apology warranted.

Kelsey: Well, I was going to say in the case of Target, in the case of Converse, in the case of Good Good, to me, I’m like, yes, very obviously…

Jennimai: Something needed to be said.

Kelsey: Yeah. And then when talking about Nike, it’s like there’s nothing to apologize for. There’s controversy, but let it lie. It says something about your brand stance. I want to bring up Cracker Barrel. Do you remember?

Jennimai: How could I forget?

Kelsey: Do you remember this?

Jennimai: Of course.

Kelsey: Refresh our memory.

Jennimai: Well, Cracker Barrel did a refresh themselves. They changed their entire brand identity and really kind of cleaned up the logo and their store presence and went really minimal, notably taking the old man figure, I can’t remember hi name, Uncle Herschel, is that correct?

Kelsey: Ooh…I…

Jennimai: Might be getting his name wrong, so sorry to Cracker Barrel’s old man figure, but removed him from the logo, which people felt very strongly about.

And the backlash was so strong that they reversed this entire decision, brought back the logo, brought back their kind of iconic store presence, restaurant presence, and issued an official formal apology over it, which is so fascinating because compared to, as you said, the examples that we have discussed so far that deal with rather serious societal issues, this is a very niche aesthetic kind of decision that they apologized for.

Kelsey: And I think it’s so interesting because again, my thinking behind the scenes always is like, was there conversation about how are people going to react to this and how strongly do we feel about the rebrand?

I think you do have to kind of think through the reaction. And maybe they thought nobody cares about Uncle Marshall. Again, I want to make sure that that’s…

Jennimai: Hopefully that’s his name.

Kelsey: But nobody cares about this guy, this looks cleaner, it’s better, whatever. If you make that call, you have to feel so strongly about it that you let this kind of go. We have confirmation it’s Uncle Marshall.

Jennimai: Thank you so much to our producers. That was going to haunt us forever actually.

Kelsey: But being able to just say, “No, it is what it is. Leave it and let it lie.” I think you have to be able to have some of that foresight.

And I think that in this case, it’s like apologizing makes it feel not thought through. It makes everybody feel weird. You know what I mean?

Jennimai: It makes it feel like, oh, you just went with the tide of public opinion. And it feels like the power of what the public said was so much stronger than anyone maybe thought it was, and it fully reversed it. And then apologizing, it just gives it so much more gravity that I think I’m still kind of surprised at today.

Kelsey: I really think that we wouldn’t be talking about Cracker Barrel on an apology episode, but I don’t think we would be talking about them as much if they had…

Jennimai: Stuck to their guns.

Kelsey: Not apologized. Yeah. And maybe I’m misreading the Cracker Barrel fan base, but I just don’t think...I think it would’ve blown over.

Jennimai: Yeah. I mean, I think the root of apologizing is wanting to make your customer base feel heard.

So I guess in that way I can understand why Cracker Barrel apologized in this case because the response was really like, “Oh, you don’t understand us as customers if you’re going to change all of this iconic logo and space and everything that makes Cracker Barrel what it is. If you’re going to change that, you really don’t get us.”

So I kind of get you want to further acknowledge like, “Oh, we made you feel not understood and we want you to feel understood. That is our intention. This is why we’re doing it.” Again, it just feels like it was a smaller situation than others have been.

Kelsey: But I think such a challenge here, again, and it goes back to social listening. Everybody can have an opinion on the internet and everybody’s incentivized to have an opinion because if you have a take, then your people are going to be riled up in the comments and then you’re going to get recirculated on people’s For You page.

So controversy is currency in a lot of social media platforms. And so is that person who’s like, “I’m never going to Cracker Barrel again.” Were they even going in the first place?

Jennimai: So true.

Kelsey: Are they your customer base? And I think that’s one of the things that continues to be really challenging for brands is when something escapes containment a little bit and then it reaches people who are not the customer base, have no influence on sales or whatever the KPIs are, but are now going to be really noisy about something because it’s a good topic to get riled up about. You have to reckon with it. How do you know the difference, right?

Jennimai: Yeah. I mean, you might not know the difference, but you are also kind of always risking that louder person, that louder reaction will get back to your actual customer and influence them.

Kelsey: Correct. Yes.

Jennimai: Even if it’s not the direct customer, there is impact out of it. So I understand why it feels like a crisis that you have to address. Yeah.

Kelsey: I mean, I think going back to Good Good, I think people were talking about that. People were talking about that who do not play golf or are not golfers, but it touched a nerve about broader conversations about women in sports and women representation in media and all these sorts of things.

And so I think that when it escapes containment, it’s sort of like that person will certainly never be a customer. You’ve just guaranteed that if that’s the only thing that that person knows about your brand.

Jennimai: Yeah. They’re never going to even give you a chance in the future for sure.

Kelsey: Exactly.

What brands should avoid when crafting apologies

Jennimai: Okay. So we’ve talked a lot about what should be part of a brand apology. Are there any things that you think brands should be avoiding as they’re crafting their apologies?

Kelsey: Ooh, I think that, that’s such a good question and I’d like to know your thoughts too.

But I think to me, one of the biggest missteps that I see is pointing fingers to somebody else.

This wasn’t our fault. This was somebody else’s fault. We’re fixing it. It’s kind of going back to blaming the social media intern, which it’s such a trope. And obviously we know that social media should not be in the hands of interns. It should be in the hands of well-paid professionals with a lot of strategy experience.

But when you say, “We’re trying to remove it. It’s not our fault. Somebody else did this,” immediately…

Jennimai: It’s just not genuine.

Kelsey: It’s just not genuine.

Jennimai: Yeah. No one wants to hear that.

Kelsey: And I think that can be a real...it can be very easy to want to do that. And I think really a brand has to just own it and be like, “This should not have happened,” and let it be.

Jennimai: Move on.

Kelsey: Internally, you can figure out what happened.

Jennimai: Yeah. That’s not for the public. That’s for you to figure out on the inside.

The other piece that I think is really important is you have to get really clear on exactly what it is that you’re apologizing for. I think a brand cannot afford to be seen as totally missing the point on what they are apologizing for. I think the best example of this is the infamous Pepsi Kendall Jenner ad.

Kelsey: Yes. Oh, how could we forget?

Jennimai: So I re-watched it this morning and I was like, “Wow, this was really a crazy thing that they aired.” But that one, when they did issue their apology, they kind of skipped over the entire kind of reaction and relating it to the Black Lives Matter movement at the time.

And by mincing your words and just jumping over what is actually the issue at hand, I think people will only be more upset by you apologizing because it will read as trying to save face rather than genuine regret and trying to atone for a mistake. And that will only add fuel to the fire.

Kelsey: Yeah. Yeah. And then I think that being mealy-mouthed is such something to avoid. And I think you have to say sorry.

Jennimai: Yeah.

Kelsey: I think sometimes you see a brand apology and they, again, it’s mealy-mouthed, but you trying to skip the word sorry, I want to issue an apology or I want to address this thing.

Jennimai: We apologize. Yeah.

Kelsey: Or for those who were offended, that sort of language that kind of tries to maybe undersell the issue, I think always people spot it. Consumers spot it. And I think that reads as disingenuous and unfair.

Jennimai: Yeah. It’s the same feeling I would think when in interpersonal conflict, if someone says, “I’m sorry that you felt that way.” That’s very different than, “I am sorry.” And I think it’s kind of the same comparison as when brands are kind of dodging around actually saying, “I’m sorry.”

Kelsey: Yeah.

What to ask yourself when issuing a brand apology

Jennimai: So to sum up, I do think there’s a list of questions that you should ask yourself if you’re in a position to issue a brand apology.

First of which, asking yourself how serious is the issue? And if it’s serious, how fast can you act?
Next, what platforms do you want to connect with people on for the statement?
And then what is our brand stance on the issue at hand? Get really clear on that.
And lastly, how can we clearly communicate the appropriate context or next steps?

I think that’s an important piece too, is that research has shown that when you kind of put your money where your mouth is and say this is how we’re going to fix it moving forward, whether that’s with a donation or with internal processes being reevaluated, that is an important thing to vocalize and make clear as well.

Kelsey: Yeah. I think that’s such a good point. I think that brands apologizing and saying, “We’re going to make this donation and we’re going to fix our processes” is one step.

I think for some consumers, they say, “You can’t just pay your way out of this.” Totally. So are there ways to make that more really putting your money where your mouth is in a longstanding…

Jennimai: Not just today, but moving forward.

Kelsey: Exactly. Yeah. But I think you make it sound easier than it is.

Jennimai: A little checklist for you. Yeah. But not a situation anyone wants to be in, but hopefully something that you can navigate if you are in.

Kelsey: Yeah, definitely.

Jennimai: Well, thanks so much for joining us today. And if you have any thoughts on brand apologies, let us know in the comments wherever you’re listening or watching, or send us an email at mkbw@morningbrew.com, which you can also find in the show notes, and we’ll catch you next week.

*This transcript was automatically generated using AI and reviewed by a human.

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