Last week my feed was dominated by the oldest lie in marketing: that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

The pitch: sell controversy, not sport

Novig, a sports prediction platform, launched a campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney posing nearly nude, covered only by a football, a baseball bat, a hockey stick, a tennis racket. Her line – “Novig is just sports.” The strategy wasn’t subtle. A Northeastern marketing professor described it afterwards as “almost like an instigating troll sort of thing,” a company chasing viral outrage rather than conventional ad recall. The bet was that shock travels further than a normal media buy, and for about 48 hours, it did.

What it cost someone else to pay for

Female Olympic and professional athletes didn’t treat it as a joke. Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus called it “a kick in the face to every woman” who’s dedicated herself to sport. Boxer Skye Nicolson said it made a “mockery” of women’s sport, drawing the line between being fit and “using sex to sell ‘sport.'” British sprinter Amy Hunt countered publicly that women’s sport is “muscles, hard work, blood, sweat, tears,” not the image Novig put out. Sweeney defended the ad by posting old ESPN Body Issue covers. Novig itself said nothing.

What about Sweeney’s fans?

Sweeney lost roughly 203,000 Instagram followers in the first 48 hours. She clawed back about 103,000 in the following 48, netting a two-week loss of around 118,000. Search interest in “Sydney Sweeney sports ad” briefly outpaced searches for major news stories, real reach, just not durable reach.

The thread

Controversy isn’t a purchase. It’s a loan, and this one is already being repaid at a loss. The attention spike peaked and started decaying within days, while the damage to how seriously women’s sport gets taken doesn’t run on the same recovery curve.

I asked a 29 year old male, who would be in smack bang in the Novig demographic what he thought of the ad and he said: “I haven’t actually seen it. Isn’t it just Sydney Sweeny getting her boo*bs out like she does?”. Brutal.

Whoever buys the controversy gets a short-lived spike, whoever gets used as the controversy’s cost absorbs something that doesn’t rebound on the same timeline. Before signing off on “let’s be a bit provocative,” ask who’s fronting that loan, and whether they agreed to the terms.

After a while, people become immune to the shock value, so you aren’t getting the bang for your buck, but the damage is still done. Worth remembering that substance never goes out of style.

By Amanda Lacey

This article is provided for general commentary on public interest matters and does not constitute legal advice. Follow Amanda on social media Instagram @amandalacey23 and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandaleelacey/