How delivering the right message is tough for brands during a crisis

Why did Nike's ad resonate? And why Kent's backfired...

The atta maker advertisement by Kent RO Systems and Nike’s anti-racism “Don’t do it” campaign are miles apart — by geography, context and relevance. What binds them, however, is the fact that each was responding to an ongoing crisis and instantly became a talking point.

While opinion on the Nike ad might be divided, the reaction to the Kent ad was uniformly critical to the extent that the company had to apologise for the same. So how do brands avoid falling into such a trap? How can they come up with winning communication amid time and resource constraints as they