^{It’s Monday, I’m Nithya Sudhir. I collect words, chase patterns, and write about whatever makes me curious.}

You've heard people apologizing.

The casual "sorry", "Entschüldigung", "Pardon", everywhere.

Then there's a new genre, I like to call it, of apologies: when brands do it.

Mind you, different rules apply here.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about the Official Apology Trend that got traction last year, where brands apologize for being too good, too iconic, too impossible to ignore. Cute marketing bit, not what this issue is about. I'm talking about the real deal.

Like when Kyte Baby's CEO issued not one but two apology videos after backlash over a fired employee, and the first one made things worse before the second one helped?

Or when American Eagle chose not to apologize at all for the outrage over its "Great Jeans" campaign, and held its ground through the whole thing?

Or when Cracker Barrel skipped the apology question entirely after its logo sparked a firestorm, and just quietly reversed the decision instead?

People were split every time.

A brand apology isn't a reflex, it's a decision, usually made by a team, sometimes with lawyers in the room, and it gets read by thousands of people looking for exactly one thing: whether it's real.

So, when it finally comes down to it, should a brand say sorry, or hold its ground and how?

It’s Monday. Let’s get into it.

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In an experiment done by Peter Kim, Kurt Dirks, Cecily Cooper, and Donald Ferrin, participants were given a scenario where someone had broken their trust, then shown one of two responses: an apology, or a denial.

The experiment was done to see if apologies work in all situations.

Turns out, they don't.

Denial repaired trust more effectively than saying sorry, according to the published results.

What? Yes, apologizing for the wrong kind of failure made things measurably worse.

But knowing which kind of failure you're facing is only step one. Real crises rarely announce themselves that clearly, and even once you know, there's still the matter of how you say it, if you say it at all.

If you ever need to apologize on behalf of your brand, keep this experiment in mind:

In 2016, 755 people are sat on a bench. They have no idea that they are going to become armchair judges.

Researchers Roy Lewicki, Beth Polin, and Robert Lount give them all a scenario: a tax accountant who messes up a client's tax return. Don’t we all relate?

However, people get two different versions. One where the accountant makes an honest mistake. And another where he does it on purpose, because his boss told him to.

Same mess-up, two different reasons behind it.

Then everyone gets something else too: the apology. Different versions containing one or more of the following 6 themes:

The task: read the apology, then rate how believable and effective it actually felt.

What happened: The apology with all six ingredients won every time. More was always better.

But here's where it gets interesting. Not all six pulled their weight equally.

That's what makes an apology work once you've decided to give one. But the harder question comes first: should you apologize at all, and how do you actually decide?

Here’s what research says:

1. Gauge the public.

Start with Attribution Theory, which says the first question isn't "should we apologize," it's "what does the public already believe caused this?" If they have concluded the cause was internal, a deliberate choice, a value the brand acted against, that judgment is already locked in. No amount of external framing will undo it.

2. Check which failure you're actually dealing with.

The experiment above splits every case into two buckets: honest mistakes, where owning it works, and deliberate ones, where denial can outperform apology, at least while guilt is still ambiguous.

Figure out which bucket you're actually in before you draft a single word.

American Eagle's "Great Jeans" campaign sat in that ambiguous zone. The backlash was a dispute over interpretation, not a confirmed admission of wrongdoing, exactly the condition that makes holding firm work.

Cracker Barrel sidestepped the question entirely and went straight to reversing the logo. Action, not attribution.

3. Reactance decides whether it lands or backfires.

Psychologist Jack Brehm developed this theory in 1966: people believe they're entitled to certain freedoms, including the freedom to think, feel, and react however they want. The moment that freedom feels restricted or managed, whether by a rule, a persuasion attempt, or a scripted apology, they experience an uncomfortable pull to reassert it. Check how the apology is being delivered before it goes out, not just what it says.

A scripted, lawyer-reviewed apology reads as an attempt at control. The audience feels handled instead of heard, and digs in rather than relents. It's not that the apology gets the facts wrong. It's that it reads less like an honest account and more like an instruction: feel better now.

4. If the apology clears that bar, whether it actually works comes down to what's inside it.

Not all apologies are built the same, and it turns out the ingredients matter more than the sentiment. Go back to the six-ingredient breakdown above and check the draft against it: does it plainly say "this was my fault," and does it offer a concrete fix. Those two carry almost the entire weight.

Liquid Death sells canned water, and more recently sparkling water and iced tea, positioned entirely against category convention.

That same irreverence extends to how the brand handles its own mistakes.

The Nuclear Blast Logo Backfire (2022)

What happened: Liquid Death publicly joked that metal label Nuclear Blast had copied its skull logo for a rebrand. The joke backfired instantly. The logo hadn't been designed by Nuclear Blast's team at all, it was drawn by an independent artist, Justin Moll, who suddenly found himself at the center of a pile-on over something he hadn't done.

How they handled it: Founder Mike Cessario apologized directly, on the record, to Moll: "Shame on me for not fully thinking through all of the possible unintended consequences of a post like that."

No hedge, no corporate language, a personal admission of fault.

The Arnold Palmer Rename (2023)

What happened: Liquid Death launched a tea-lemonade drink called "Armless Palmer," a play on golfer Arnold Palmer's name. Palmer's estate sent a legal threat over the trademark.

How they handled it: Rather than fight it, Liquid Death renamed the drink "Dead Billionaire" within weeks, no legal battle, no drawn-out defensiveness, and turned the whole exchange into a joke on Instagram instead.

The "Deep" Classroom Ad (2024)

What happened: Liquid Death partnered with The Deep, a character from Amazon's The Boys, on a campaign meant to warn kids about sugary drinks. The ad showed him making kids ingest cups of sugar and blowing secondhand cigarette smoke at them in a classroom, and it drew real criticism for being inappropriate.

How they handled it: Liquid Death publicly ended the partnership and apologized, but wrote the apology in their own comedic voice rather than a somber corporate one, framing The Deep as a repeat-offender employee they were finally letting go for good.

The "Greatest Hates" Albums: Rather than hiding from poor reviews or angry comments, Liquid Death converts them into content, hiring real death metal and punk bands to turn verbatim hate comments into full studio albums (three volumes since 2020).

My two cents: there's no universal rulebook here, and maybe that's the actual lesson. Liquid Death apologizes when it genuinely wronged someone, quietly corrects course when it misjudges a market, and turns pure noise into content when there's nothing real to own.

The skill isn't picking a stance and sticking to it. It's reading each situation correctly before reacting to it at all.

That’s all for today.

Let me know what you think about this week’s issue.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

Until next time,
Nithya

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