Celebrity advertising has recently produced a fresh run of controversies involving Sydney Sweeney, Olivia Jade Giannulli and Karina, but marketing experts say backlash can serve very different purposes depending on whether provocation was deliberate. Sweeney's Novig campaign shows how controversy can drive a brand into the wider conversation, while Reformation's decision to put Giannulli in a "College" sweatshirt appears to knowingly play with her family's history. Converse offers the counterexample: the company removed advertising featuring Karina after viewers drew disturbing associations from its imagery, saying it had "got this wrong." Experts told Newsweek that controversy can strengthen a brand when audiences understand what it stands for, but attention alone does not guarantee loyalty.
Provocation in advertising is hardly new, but social platforms allow anger, criticism and debate to rapidly amplify a campaign. That creates an uncomfortable question whenever an ad provokes outrage: did something go wrong, or is everyone talking about it precisely because the marketing worked? Sweeney's latest partnership provides perhaps the clearest example of how the line can blur.
Her campaign for sports prediction platform Novig shows the actress posing with sports equipment while promoting its "just sports" message. It drew criticism from athletes including Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus, British sprinter Amy Hunt and former gymnast Gracie Kramer, who argued that it sexualized women in sports and undermined efforts to focus attention on athletic achievement. Yet controversy clearly brought attention with it.
Novig co-founder Jacob Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that Sweeney, who has become an equity holder and strategic partner in the company, is "great at captivating audiences and being the center of attention." "In some sense, it forces us into the national discourse," he said. Michael Lewis, a professor of marketing at Emory University, previously told Newsweek that Sweeney's approach runs against dominant cultural narratives around how women are represented. "She's a throwback to the 1990s and the old world of sex sells," Lewis said.
"When she goes out there, the reaction is like a reflex." The conversation has already spread beyond Novig. Earlier this month, Powerade released ads playing on "Just Sports" with their own tagline: "Never Just Sports." Leah Macko, Powerade’s senior director of brand marketing, said in a statement to Inc. magazine: “When the conversation around how women are portrayed in sports started to pick up, we felt it was important for Powerade to share our perspective and reinforce what’s always been at the heart of our brand: athletes." Newsweek reached out to Powerade's press team via email for comment on Wednesday. Reformation took a different route in its autumn "Good Sport" campaign with Olivia Jade Giannulli.
One image shows Giannulli wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the word "College," a pointed choice given her family's central role in the U.S. college admissions scandal. Her parents, Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli, were prosecuted after Giannulli and her sister were falsely presented as crew recruits in connection with their admission to the University of Southern California. That history gives an otherwise ordinary piece of collegiate clothing an obvious second meaning.
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