How a fast-food chain made a photo of a rotting burger one of the most awarded ads of the year.
How a canned-water company built a billion-dollar brand by being deliberately, gleefully offensive.
And how a single holiday commercial wiped more than a billion dollars off one fitness brand's value in three days.
When the internet first took off in the 1990s, the prevailing thought was that it would level the playing field between small and large companies. Three decades later that's truer than ever, especially with the reach of social media. A single post, video, or campaign can take a company from obscurity to the center of the national conversation overnight.
The challenge for any company is to publish content that grabs attention and gets people sharing. All it takes is one great article or video to move a brand from unknown to everywhere. And attention, handled well, leads to sales.
Controversy Breeds Publicity
One of the fastest ways for a company to generate publicity is with content that provokes strong reactions. Controversy is a seed that can grow into publicity at an exponential rate. As a divisive story gains traction, more journalists, creators, and outlets pile on to cover it, and on social media it can tip into full viral spread. Before long, millions of people, including your prospective customers, are aware of (and arguing about) the product or service at the center of it.
Marketers have a name for the free coverage this generates: earned media. Unlike paid advertising, you don't buy it. You earn it by giving people something they can't help but talk about. The dollar value of that coverage can dwarf what the campaign itself cost to produce, which is exactly why the tactic is so tempting.
Controversy Takes Guts
Creating controversy is risky, and without risk there is rarely a big reward. Plenty of companies are too cautious to ever try. The leaders willing to take the heat, the criticism from media, peers, and even part of their own audience, are sometimes the ones who end up laughing all the way to the bank.
"Sometimes" is the key word, and it's where the old version of this advice needs an update. Controversy is a powerful tool, and like any powerful tool it can build or destroy. The same basic instinct that built one brand into a billion-dollar business cost another more than a billion dollars in value in a matter of days. The difference comes down to a handful of principles we'll get to. First, three stories.
When Controversy Pays: Burger King's "Moldy Whopper"
In early 2020, Burger King ran one of the least appetizing ads in fast-food history, on purpose. The "Moldy Whopper" campaign showed its signature burger decomposing in time-lapse over about 34 days, going green and fuzzy with mold, under the line "The beauty of no artificial preservatives." The whole point was to dramatize that Burger King had pulled artificial preservatives from the Whopper.
Reactions split right down the middle. Some people found it bold and brilliant; plenty of others found it flat-out disgusting and wondered aloud whether they'd ever order a Whopper again. That division is exactly what made it spread. The campaign generated billions of earned-media impressions worldwide and went on to win the Outdoor Grand Prix at the 2021 Cannes Lions, along with a sweep of other top industry awards. Burger King also credited the campaign with lifting sales and sharply raising awareness that its food no longer contained artificial preservatives.
It worked because the controversy served the message instead of distracting from it. The "gross" reaction was the hook, but the idea people walked away with, real food spoils, was precisely the point Burger King wanted to make. The provocation and the marketing message were the same thing, which is what separates a strategic stunt from a desperate one.
Building a Brand on Being Polarizing: Liquid Death
If Burger King shows how an established giant can pull off a single bold campaign, Liquid Death shows how an upstart can build an entire company on being polarizing from day one.
Liquid Death sells water. Plain water (plus sparkling water and iced tea) in a tallboy can that looks like a craft beer or an energy drink, wrapped in a heavy-metal skull logo and the tagline "Murder Your Thirst." Plenty of people found the whole concept absurd or distasteful. That was precisely the point. The brand's stated marketing philosophy amounts to asking "what is the dumbest possible idea we could do for this?" and then doing it.
The results are hard to argue with. The company's very first marketing video cost about $1,500 and pulled in more than three million views within four months. Liquid Death has leaned all the way into the hate it attracts, even releasing an album called "Greatest Hates" with lyrics taken word for word from its angriest online comments. Revenue climbed from roughly $3 million in 2019 to about $333 million in 2024, and a 2024 funding round valued the company at $1.4 billion. It now sells in well over 100,000 retail locations, from Whole Foods to Walmart.
Liquid Death's edge isn't shock on its own. It's that the irreverence is perfectly matched to its audience, the Gen Z and millennial buyers who make up the large majority of its customers and who are tired of earnest, sterile beverage branding. The "controversy" is really a brand voice so distinct that people feel compelled to share it. That is earned media by design, built into the product instead of bolted onto a one-off ad.
When Controversy Backfires: Peloton
Now the cautionary tale. For the 2019 holiday season, the fitness company Peloton ran an ad in which a young woman, gifted a Peloton bike by her husband, nervously films a video diary of herself working out for a year to thank him. Peloton meant it as heartwarming. A huge share of viewers read it very differently, as tone-deaf, with an already-fit woman who seemed anxious to please a husband who had bought her exercise equipment she never asked for.
The mockery was instant and enormous. The ad spawned a wave of viral parodies, and the reaction spilled into the company's stock: shares fell about 9% the day the criticism peaked and roughly 15% over three days, a loss of around $1.5 billion in market value. (Peloton argued the stock move wasn't caused by the ad, but the timing was hard to ignore.)
The contrast with Burger King and Liquid Death is the entire lesson. Those brands provoked on purpose, in a way that fit who they were and what they were selling. Peloton stumbled into controversy without meaning to, and the strong reaction it triggered worked against the brand rather than for it. Strong emotion is the engine of viral attention either way. The only question is whether it's pulling in your direction.
Controversy Is a Strategy, Not a Stunt
Put those three stories side by side and a clear pattern emerges. Controversy can absolutely drive attention, earned media, and sales, but only when it's treated as a strategy rather than a cheap stunt. A few principles separate the wins from the disasters:
- Know your audience, and commit to the idea. Burger King and Liquid Death both knew exactly who they were talking to and went all in on a provocation those people would enjoy or at least respect. Decide whom you are willing to put off, and make sure you are winning the people who matter more.
- Make it true to your brand. Controversy works when it expresses something the brand genuinely stands for, the way the Moldy Whopper expressed Burger King's "real food" message. When it feels opportunistic or bolted on, audiences sense it instantly.
- Be ready for the blowback. The criticism is part of the deal, not a surprise. Decide in advance how far you'll go, prepare your response, and don't flinch halfway. A half-hearted retreat tends to anger everyone at once.
- Aim for conversation, not just shock. The goal is earned media that points back to your product, not outrage that buries it. Shock for its own sake is forgotten in a week, or worse, remembered for the wrong reason.
Done with intention, controversial content is one of the most cost-effective ways to earn attention there is. A campaign that costs very little to produce can generate millions of dollars' worth of coverage and conversation. Done carelessly, it can do the opposite just as quickly, and the bill comes due in lost customers rather than gained ones.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is that controversy sells, because it stirs up high-intensity emotions, the kind with real passion behind them, like anger, fear, joy, and delight. When people feel strongly on both sides of an issue, conversation follows, and conversation is attention. The trick is making sure that attention lands on your brand for a reason that helps you rather than one that haunts you.
If you want to create content that gets people talking, and pointed at the right audience for the right reasons, our team can help you do it well.
This is part of our guide to marketing your small business online.
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