Nerd Alert: Brands in Unsafe Places

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Marketing Architects

Episode: Nerd Alert: Brands in Unsafe Places

Date: April 16, 2026
Hosts: Alayna Jasper (A) & Rob DeMars (B)

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the impact of brand safety incidents—situations where brand ads appear alongside offensive or inappropriate content—on consumer trust and brand outcomes. Drawing from new academic research, the hosts unpack how and why these incidents harm brands, the nuances of content safety, and what marketers can do in response.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is “Brand Safety”?

• Definition: Brand safety incidents occur when advertisements for brands are placed near unsafe or offensive content (e.g., a cruise line ad next to news about a deadly outbreak at sea, or family-friendly brands appearing before extremist videos).
• Consumer Perceptions: Most consumers don’t distinguish between algorithmic ad placement and deliberate choices by brands; they tend to hold brands at least partially responsible.

Notable Quote

"When you have that moment of feeling almost discomfort when you see an ad, it actually changes how you think about the brand. Probably more than brands would like."
— Alayna Jasper [01:42]

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2. Research Study Overview

• Authors: Lauren Gerwal (Dartmouth); Prasad Vana, Andrew Stephen (Oxford)
• Published: Journal of Marketing Research, last year.
• Methodology:
  • Real-world Twitter data: 86 brands involved in public brand safety incidents; 7M tweets analyzed before/after incidents.
  • Six controlled experiments: Platforms included Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to gauge consumer reactions.

Key Findings

• Brand Trust Drops: Exposure to ads near unsafe content reduces trust in the brand and subsequently influences purchase intent, liking, and word-of-mouth.
• Secondhand Exposure: Harm occurs whether someone sees the ad directly or just reads about the incident in the news.
• Speed: Trust and brand sentiment drops are measurable within days.
• Not All Brands Are Equal: Service and hedonic brands (entertainment/lifestyle) suffer more than utilitarian or physical product brands. Lesser-known or less-liked brands are more vulnerable.
• Brand-Content Fit: If the unsafe content aligns with brand image (e.g., counterculture brand next to cannabis content), damage is minimal.
• Content Severity: Only truly unsafe content (hate speech, extremism) is damaging; merely negative/heavy content is not.

Notable Quotes

"The damage was the same… even reading a news article about a brand safety incident had just as negative of a reaction."
— Alayna [03:27]

"The drop in trust related language about the brand was measurable within days. So pretty quickly, wow, this stuff was damaging."
— Alayna [04:59]

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3. Practical Marketing Takeaways

• Fast Response Matters: Brands that respond quickly to an incident fare better than those who wait or fail to respond.
• Don’t Overblock: Over-cautious blocking can harm reach and is not always necessary—context and content fit should be assessed.
• Risk Profiling: Service and hedonic brands, or those with lower familiarity, need more robust brand safety monitoring.
• Case Differentiation: The best response (quick action vs. silence) can depend on incident type (ad placement vs. brand controversy).

Notable Quotes

"Immediate responses significantly outperformed delayed ones. And no response to something like this was the worst outcome."
— Alayna [07:05]

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4. Memorable Analogy

Alayna illustrates brand safety with a dinner party metaphor:

"Imagine you're a well dressed guest at a fancy dinner party and the host accidentally seats you next to someone who starts making scene after scene… People at the table start glancing at you like you're somehow associated. That's brand safety in a nutshell." — Alayna [07:42]

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5. Real-Life Example: A Marketing Architects Incident

Story: Years ago, a Marketing Architects product ad aired during a massive Florida hurricane, and was playfully mocked by David Letterman on his show ([09:06]).

• Rob’s Take:
  "Did you apologize, Rob?" — Alayna [09:59] "Oh, hell no. We measured response." — Rob [10:05]

• Outcomes:
  No significant positive or negative impact detected, partly because the product was new and unknown at the time.

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Notable Quotes & Moments With Timestamps

• [01:42] – "When you have that moment of feeling almost discomfort… it actually changes how you think about the brand."
• [03:27] – "Even reading a news article about a brand safety incident had just as negative of a reaction as someone who actually experienced the ad next to bad content."
• [04:59] – "The drop in trust… was measurable within days."
• [07:05] – "Immediate responses significantly outperformed delayed ones."
• [07:42] – Alayna’s dinner party analogy: "People at the table start glancing at you like you're somehow associated. That's brand safety in a nutshell."
• [09:59] – "Oh, hell no. We measured response," recounting the company’s own brand safety incident.

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Important Timestamps by Segment

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------| | 00:49 | Introduction to brand safety | | 01:42 | Effects of uncomfortable ad placements | | 03:10 | Research setup and findings begin | | 04:34 | Speed of brand damage and public spread | | 04:59 | Details on at-risk brands and nuances | | 07:05 | Recommended marketing responses | | 07:42 | Dinner party analogy | | 09:06 | Real-life Marketing Architects incident | | 10:08 | Impact and reflection on the incident |

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Conclusion

Key takeaway: Unsafe ad placements can quickly erode brand trust, especially for certain brand types. The best defenses are vigilant monitoring, context awareness, and swift action when incidents occur. The episode blends current research with relatable analogies and real-world stories, making actionable insights accessible for practitioners facing the ever-evolving challenges of digital marketing.

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Transcript

[A]

Nerd Alert. Learning is important, right?

[B]

Yes, exactly. But a bunch of nerds.

[A]

Nerd alert. That's right.

[B]

Marketing Architects. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Alayna Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects. And I'm joined by my co host, Rob demars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

Hello. We are back with your weekly Nerd Alert. Every week I'll take a deep dive into academic marketing research and translate its complex ideas into simple, understandable language for Rob and of course, for all of you. Are you ready to nerd out, Rob?

[A]

Elena, I was abducted by an alien life form and they said, take me to your thought leader. So I gave them your home address. Hope that's.

[B]

Oh, great. Can't wait. Can't wait for that. This week I read Brands and Unsafe Places, Effects of Brand Safety incidents on brand outcomes. This is by Lauren Gerwal of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, Prasad Vana and Andrew Stephen of the said Business School at the University of Oxford. And it was published just last year in the Journal of Marketing Research. This is a fresh one, but before we get into it, Rob, have you ever say you're scrolling social media, you scroll past an ad and you think, why on earth is that brand showing up here? Maybe you're on an article, it doesn't have to be social. Like, maybe something just felt off about

[A]

where that ad was placed to give the algorithms credit. It's actually still pretty amazing how well tailored the advertising placements can be. But there are times when I'm like, what in the world is there? Like a monkey spinning a wheel. And that's how the ad got served up.

[B]

I feel like there's. That comes from two angles. One is just, why did I get this? And then the other is, why is this here? And that's what this study is about. So as it turns out, when you have that moment of feeling almost discomfort when you see an ad, it actually changes how you think about the brand. Probably more than brands would like. So this paper is all about brand safety. That's what happens when your brand's ad appears next to content that's maybe in a. Maybe offensive, maybe inappropriate. Think about a cruise line ad running next to a story about a deadly outbreak at sea. Or a family friendly brand's pre roll showing up before a video from someone with extremist Views, Those are called brand safety incidents, and they happen more than brands would like to admit. But, Rob, before I get into what the study actually found, if you saw a brand that you loved running an ad next to something very offensive online, would you blame the brand or would you just chalk it up to an algorithmic mistake?

[A]

I don't know, maybe I'm being too forgiving on this one, but it doesn't bug me. I think I'm actually bothered more by a brand that I love running on a show that I despise. Like, you support that more. And even that I don't do very often, personally, I don't. But I'm sure the study says that people definitely get tweaked by it.

[B]

Well, it's also a tough question because as marketers, I think we're gonna have a very different view because we know how that could happen. If you're seeing an ad next to something, you're probably thinking, it's not like the brand manager went out and selected that.

[A]

Yeah, they controlled the pod. Yeah.

[B]

Yes. But I think the average consumer seeing it is more likely to assume that they were more careless about it. This study found that consumers don't completely let brands off the hook. They set this up in two, two different ways. So first they looked at real world data from Twitter. This was before X rebranded. And they tracked sentiment around 86 brands that had publicly known brand safety incidents. So they were looking at almost 7 million tweets analyzed before and after each incident. Then they also ran six controlled experiments across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to test their theories they were trying to understand. Does appearing next to unsafe content actually hurt a brand? And if so, why? The short answer is yes, and the reason is trust. So when we see a brand's ad next to something offensive or harmful, we tend to start to doubt what the brand stands for. And trust in that brand can drop. And once that drops, other things follow, like purchase intent, brand liking, and word of mouth. So there's sort of this downstream domino effect. And interestingly, they found that it didn't matter whether a consumer experienced this firsthand or just heard about it from someone else. The damage was the same. This is so sad. Even reading a news article about a brand safety incident had just as negative of a reaction as someone who actually experienced the ad next to bad content. So, Rob, say this. Something like this happens. How fast do you think brand damage can spread?

[A]

I mean, I'll confess I'm shocked that ad placement safety could spread. Like, obviously, we all know about the Bud Light Incident with brand safety or the Kendall Jenner Pepsi incident that spread like wildfire. But having an ad placement go viral because it was up against some other thing that. That amazes me. If it is catching on as fast as those more obvious incidents.

[B]

I was surprised too by this. And so they looked at brand sentiment on Twitter after an incident like this, and they found that the drop in trust related language about the brand was measurable within days. So pretty quickly, wow, this stuff was damaging. Now, not every brand was equally at risk, so they found that some factors made incidents more or less damaging. This is very interesting. Service brands were hit a lot harder than product brands. So hedonic brands that would be things like lifestyle entertainment, anything emotional, those got hit harder than utilitarian ones. And brands that already had a lower familiarity or weaker consumer liking suffered more than brands that people already loved and trusted. And then there was this also this other big finding around fit. So if the brand's image actually matched the unsafe content, say a brand that's more known for counterculture, running next to an ad about cannabis, consumers didn't really notice it. There wasn't a harm to evaluating the brand or an erosion in trust. The unsafeness was the worst when it felt misaligned to the brand. One other nuance of the study that's probably worth talking about, it differentiated between content that's genuinely just unsafe, hate speech, extremist stuff, and content that's just negative or heavy, like a video about environmental toxins, maternal mortality rates. And they found that the truly unsafe content damaged brands, whereas negative but not unsafe content had no effect. There's this difference. That's why some people get concerned, I don't want my brand next to certain things. It's. There's a difference. It's okay to be next to certain content or certain reality shows maybe, or a murder mystery. You know, sometimes marketers, they get obsessed with that. I don't want to be next to this content. It's like, no, it's really, if it's only truly unsafe content. All right, so what does this mean for marketers? They found that you should respond fast if an incident occurs. So they did some supplemental research and they found that immediate responses significantly outperformed delayed ones. And no response to something like this was the worst outcome. Which I think is interesting because when we had Tyler Milfeld on the show, we talked about there's a difference. Like he was talking about more of the Bud Light sort of issue, where he said the best response was none. I think this is different. Like, we're saying this is like you're appearing next to something and people are freaking out about it, but they think that a quick response would outperform something that's delayed. Then they said don't over block. So not all negative content is brand unsafe. Context and fit matter. So blanket blocking can cost you legitimate reach and then know your risk profile. Maybe depending on your type of brand. If you're a service brand or more hedonic, you might need more robust monitoring system because you're more exposed. I'd also say that probably depending on how well known your brand is, how trusted your brand is, you might have different standards. Okay, now for a rob GPT imagine. I love this one. Imagine you're a well dressed guest at a fancy dinner party and the host accidentally seats you next to someone who starts making scene after scene. They're arguing, they're saying offensive things. They're generally embarrassing everyone around them. You didn't do anything wrong. You don't even know that person. But people at the table start glancing at you like you're somehow associated. That's brand safety in a nutshell. The brand didn't cause a problem. The algorithm picked the seat, but consumers still side eyed the brand and their trust quietly walks out the door.

[A]

That is good.

[B]

I thought that was great. I think everyone's had that moment where maybe you're next to someone where something's happening. You're like I'm not part of that. Like how do I like unassociate.

[A]

We talk a lot about is this particular ad for this kind of show and that gets a lot of attention. You hear about people being sensitive to where they're placed in a podcast. But I've never heard this level of research done on the impact of that. So that's super interesting.

[B]

Yeah, I liked it. It is definitely a very specific. Like you said at the beginning, it's a specific type of brand safety research which makes sense. It's academic research. It's harder to generalize. So it's a specific situation. But I know especially when buying digital advertising this is a big concern for brands. We have a luxury in tv.

[A]

We are not immune to having a brand safety issue of our own occur. Do you remember that one of like A Marketing Architects 1AMarketing Architects product.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

All right, well I'm going to refresh your brain and you can decide whether or not you wanted to make the podcast here. But we happen to create our own product branded. We've talked about it many times. Bring it to market in the hurricane

[B]

right this was a long time ago.

[A]

We should say, this is a long time ago. This would have been like 2000, 2013 maybe. And there was a very historic weather event that occurred in Florida, massive hurricanes that hit in Florida. And our ads were running all over Florida, and Mr. David Letterman decided, that's pretty funny. And he in his opening monologue said, hey, here's a company that probably shouldn't run during a hurricane. And he played our app.

[B]

Oh, that's so funny. Oh, no. Now, did you apologize, Rob?

[A]

Oh, hell no. We measured response.

[B]

Did it work?

[A]

You know, I don't think we saw a net positive or net negative.

[B]

It's interesting that the net outcome you felt was neutral, but I wonder if it actually would have been negative because you're getting picked up by David Letterman, like, all of that. You think that would drive more awareness for the product.

[A]

But, wow, I think we were so early in that product story as well. It wasn't like we were a Coca Cola and people were reacting to it and mad we were a new product in general. So if anything, I think it probably brought us more attention to this very unique value proposition. But again, it didn't greatly accelerate the sales in that moment either.

[B]

Interesting. All right, that's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing Marketing Architects.