Pepsi's "Live for Now" campaign, featuring Kendall Jenner handing a can of soda to a police officer during a protest, generated a 21,000% increase in online mentions within 48 hours. The sentiment was overwhelmingly negative. Pepsi pulled the ad and issued a public apology. The research from Vanderbilt Business that analyzed this phenomenon — and dozens of cases like it — calls it cringe marketing, and the findings should concern anyone spending money on brand awareness.

The research, co-authored by Anthony Salerno at Vanderbilt University, Brianna Escoe at Louisiana State University, and Nathanael Martin at the University of Cincinnati, identified a specific psychological mechanism. Cringe occurs when people feel secondhand embarrassment after watching someone — or some brand — try to make a good impression and fail visibly. The audience does not just scroll past. They share.

"One of the main findings is that cringeworthy content drives word of mouth," says Escoe. "When content is released from a brand and is deemed cringeworthy by consumers, they talk about it with each other, and it leads to a huge viral response." The sharing is not neutral. It functions as social currency — a way for people to elevate themselves at the expense of the brand. The mindset, as the researchers describe it: "Look what they did. I would never do that."

The pattern has repeated with striking consistency. Tesla's brand reputation has declined measurably alongside Elon Musk's increasingly polarizing public behavior — not because the product changed, but because the brand became associated with secondhand embarrassment through its most visible representative. The researchers note that cringeworthy brand content extends beyond advertisements to include employee conduct, influencer partnerships, and executive public statements. Every public touchpoint is a potential trigger.

For brands trying to appear relevant, humorous, or socially conscious, the risk has grown. Social media amplifies cringe faster and further than almost any other form of negative publicity. A misjudged TikTok, a tone-deaf campaign, or an executive quote that tries too hard to sound relatable can generate millions of impressions — all of them corrosive. The researchers found that negative sentiment from cringe-driven virality tends to persist longer than the positive sentiment from campaigns that succeed, because the secondhand embarrassment becomes part of the brand's story in people's minds.

What the research makes actionable for business owners and marketers:

Virality is not inherently valuable. The Pepsi campaign was one of the most-discussed advertisements of its decade. The discussion destroyed value rather than building it. Measuring brand health by volume of mentions — without weighting for sentiment — is a trap that social media dashboards make dangerously easy to fall into.

Authenticity is a structural requirement, not a slogan. The campaigns that trigger cringe responses share a common feature: they attempt to borrow credibility from a social cause, cultural moment, or community they have no genuine connection to. The audience detects the gap immediately. If the connection between your brand and the cause is not real, the campaign should not exist.

Recovery demands speed and brevity. The researchers found that brands which responded quickly — pulling content, issuing brief acknowledgments, and moving on — recovered faster than those that doubled down or attempted to explain their intentions at length. Extended public explanations extend the cycle of secondhand embarrassment. The instinct to defend the work is the instinct that prolongs the damage.

Marketing teams often chase bold creative because safe creative feels forgettable. The Vanderbilt data suggests the distance between bold and cringe is shorter than most people realize. And the internet does not forget.