Anti-Patterns

Purpose marketing positions brands around values, causes, or activism — high-leverage when commitments are durable, catastrophic when performative.

Tourist marketing is brand engagement with subcultures or communities that visits without earning entry — the failure mode of subculture infiltration.

Performed lo-fi is the failure mode where brands mimic UGC aesthetics without operational authenticity — polish leaks reveal the manufactured register.

Corporate cringe is the failure mode where a brand attempts a platform-native register and visibly fails to inhabit it — vernacular misregister.

Privacy theater: performative privacy markers without underlying operational substance — Schneier's 'security theater' framework applied to privacy positioning.

Brand stretch failure modes catalogue extension-failure patterns — Cosmopolitan yogurt, Harley-Davidson cologne, Bic underwear, Colgate kitchen entrees. The named failure modes brand-architecture must address.

The anatomy of corporate apology — KFC's FCK ad, Domino's Pizza Turnaround, Tylenol 1982, JetBlue's Customer Bill of Rights, and the Schultz round-and-full framework.

When rebrands work and when they destroy equity — Aunt Jemima → Pearl Milling, Twitter → X, Dunkin', and the cultural-reckoning vs vanity-rebrand split.

Why some brands survive cultural exile and others don't — Bud Light × Mulvaney, Goya, Chick-fil-A, Nike Kaepernick, and the base-loyalty calculus.

Same crisis, different markets — D&G China, NBA-China, Mercedes Tibet, H&M Xinjiang, and the asymmetric apology bind across cultural contexts.

When internal Slack channels become public — Away CEO 2019, Bon Appétit 2020, Activision DFEH lawsuit, OpenAI board removal, and the leak-driven crisis pattern.

Reputation-improvement through adjacent association — LIV Golf, BP 'Beyond Petroleum,' Sackler museum naming, Newcastle United, Qatar 2022, and the audience-saturation limit.

Loot box mechanics and regulatory navigation — Star Wars Battlefront II 2017 backlash, Belgium 2018 gambling-classification, Diablo Immortal 2022, Genshin Impact gacha.

Mental health DTC marketing — BetterHelp FTC $7.8M settlement March 2023, Calm × LeBron 2018, Cerebral DEA investigation 2022, podcast-sponsorship $2K+ rate.

Vape brand marketing and crackdown — Juul cultural-explosion 2015-2019, Altria $12.8B Juul investment Dec 2018, FDA enforcement 2019-onward, Zyn nicotine-pouch 2023.

Wellness brand claim architecture under FDA limits — Goop FTC settlement Sep 2018, AG1 Joe Rogan, Liver King ancestral collapse Dec 2022, supplement DSHEA navigation.

Crypto brand collapse cascade — FTX Super Bowl 2022 Larry David, FTX Arena Miami Heat 2021-Jan 2023, Coinbase QR code Super Bowl, Kim K SEC $1.26M EthereumMax.

Financial influencer marketing — FinTok cultural-moment 2020-onward, SEC Kim Kardashian Oct 2022 $1.26M EthereumMax, Roaring Kitty GameStop Jan 2021, SEC promoter-rule enforcement.