People now relate to brands the way they relate to people and that changes everything.
For decades, brands controlled the conversation. You managed the message, built trust slowly, and audiences mostly just listened. They could buy or not buy, but their power stopped there.
Now your audience has the same reach you do. They can amplify you or destroy you in an afternoon. What used to take months of organized boycotts now happens in a single news cycle. Reputation used to erode. Now it evaporates.
Here's what changed: people treat brands the way they treat any relationship. There's an implicit deal. You stand for something, I give you my attention and money. Break that deal, I'm out.
This is why "we don't do politics" doesn't work anymore. Silence is a position. Your audience knows this, even if you're pretending otherwise. And it's not just transactional, it's personal. People expect brands to reflect their values. When you don't, it doesn't feel like a business decision gone wrong. It feels like betrayal.
At Garden, we think about what actually helps brands navigate this. The ones that survive controversy aren't the ones that never make mistakes, they're the ones that have built deep enough trust that their audience gives them room to recover. That trust comes from consistency over time, not from a perfectly crafted apology.
You need to know what you stand for before someone asks. If you're figuring out your values in the middle of a controversy, you've already lost. Accept that you can't be for everyone. Be clear about who you're for, and build deep loyalty with those people.
Your employees, your leadership, your partners, they all have platforms now. They can all contradict or reinforce what you say you stand for. Internal alignment isn't just an HR issue anymore. It's your brand.
Here's what's strange: some brands come back from cancellation. Others don't. The difference isn't usually the severity of the offense, it's whether the brand had built enough genuine equity that people wanted to forgive them.
Your audience isn't just watching anymore. They're participating. They're deciding what your brand means, whether you invited them to or not. The question isn't whether you'll face criticism. The question is: have you built something worth defending? And when the moment comes, will your audience defend it with you or against you?
That's the real difference between a brand and a transaction. A transaction ends when the product ships. A brand is a promise that has to be kept every day, in front of everyone, with no second takes.
The audience is watching. And they've got their phones out.
By Yasmine Aghedar
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