A Look Back at Six Blatant Backlashes from 2024

Social conservatives spooked and angered by corporate wokeness coalesced around activist Robbie Starbuck, whose accusatory tweets and boycott threats then spooked and angered the corporations. A recent Public Private Strategies Institute survey showed that 82% of business leaders still believe in DEI, but 2024’s counterstrike means they’ll probably be quieter about it.

The car rebrand without the car

The Jaguar nameplate conjures images of racing at LeMans and the pantherlike lines of the E-Type.

It does not, apparently, lend itself to a man in a dress wielding a yellow sledgehammer or a cast of androgynous models running around a purple moonscape like the Teletubbies. This was the face of Jag’s November rebranding effort, which in its first day notched 47 million views—many of them landing somewhere between perplexed and livid. (Oh, and the ads didn’t show a single car.)

A sampling of the responses on X: “This is surely a joke,” “This is terrible” and “What the actual hell is this?” Critics slammed the effort as gratuitously woke with an air of disgust that conjured memories of Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney debacle. AB InBev backed down amid that blowback. So far, at least, Jaguar is sticking to the road.

No end to the fighting

The Israel-Hamas war erupted in October of 2023 after armed Palestinian extremists attacked Israel and killed 1,143 people, prompting Israel to launch a military counterstrike that’s led to the deaths of 45,000.

But just as the violence spilled into 2024, so has the anger focused on brands perceived to be pro-Israel—even if “pro” means simply having a presence there. Predictably, boycotts and the threat of boycotts have centered on the most visible players including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Domino’s.

Some of the backlash was, in a sense, not new. The Arab League boycotted Coke from 1967 to 1991 after it opened an Israeli bottling plant. (For the record, Coke also has four facilities in the Palestinian territories.) McDonald’s Israel made headlines by announcing free meals for Israeli soldiers, but HQ in America reportedly had nothing to do with the decision.

Peak hits a valley

In early December, a torrent of rage and accusations filled the inbox of CEO Peter Dering. The reason? Dering’s company makes Peak Backpacks, one of which appeared on a video still released by the NYPD as it hunted for Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. The public’s ire stemmed from a rumor that Dering had recognized his product himself and called the cops—which he denies doing. “We cannot associate a product serial number with a customer unless that customer has voluntarily registered their product on our site,” Dering explained in a statement.