PROGRESS REPORT

ISSUE #156

Recalibrating Shame

The Michael Jackson biopic, “Michael,” has earned an estimated $1 billion worldwide since it was released a couple months ago. Does that make anyone else feel…icky?

On one hand, he was a music and pop culture genius. On the other hand, his personal behavior was concerning at best, horrifying at worst. On the other other hand, he’s no longer around to shape the way his story is told. On the other other other hand, while his family was involved with the film, their incentives were questioned by fellow family members. And on the other (x4!) hand, the general public spent 2003, 2005, 2009, and 2014 calling for Michael’s cancellation, but now we’re committing a $960 million act of…absolution?

Right, wrong, or indifferent, where did all that shame go? How did so much shame evaporate into thin air?

“Michael” is just one instance of a widespread societal paradox: For a culture obsessed with shame, our outrage doesn't always land in the right places. Collectively, we put too much shame where it doesn’t belong (think body shaming, kink shaming, going sober, or using imperfect grammar) and too little where it needs to be (using speakerphones in public, looksmaxxing, or hiding AI in ostensibly human creative work). It’s an intensely experienced, unequally distributed social compulsion.

Social media has granted The People unforeseen power to “shame up” with wild speed and effectiveness. Anyone with an internet connection has the opportunity to train the masses, rather than just those in the seat of traditional, top-down authority. At the same time, where shame once delivered enduring, absolute consequences, it can now be carelessly abandoned by the public consciousness (a la “Michael”). At its most cynical, shame is an attention-grabbing, financially enriching business strategy instead of an ethical or moral behavioral deterrent. It’s confusing; modern shame is simultaneously omnipotent and hollow; omnipresent and ephemeral.

Where shame was once business’s sharpest sword, it’s now their softest spot.

“Shaming up” is just another byproduct of consumers’ enduring lack of trust in traditional institutions—brand and business included. It tracks with the rise in conspiracy thinking and many consumers’ increasing need to self-protect. Since there’s virtually no gap between technology, entertainment, commerce, journalism, and politics, consumers are shamed virtually every waking second of every day. Shame—both internalized and externalized—is the cost of entry for being marketed to. Ironically, consumers have become adept at wielding shame themselves, spotlighting brand hypocrisies and ethical lapses.

It leaves contemporary brands clueless about what to do with shame. The marketing industry spent a century commercializing shame within a technological and social context that followed relatively stagnant rules. Those old rules gelled into a deceptive truism: Shame reliably sells mountains of product when manipulated. Call it cockiness, laziness, amorality, or whatever you’d like, but the shame commercialization play has run headlong into 21st-century transparency and connectedness. It’s an entirely new shame landscape that brands navigate like a herd of knock-kneed newborn deer.

In essence, brands are experiencing a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.

Business leadership is not blind to any of this. Debates that result from brands being shamed (or the expensive cleanup) dominate boardroom and C-suite conversations once something explodes. But these five-alarm reputational fires are more frequent now, and businesses face a legislative climate that's less predictable than at any point in the past 30 years. Brands are reacting and retrenching. Though well-intentioned, and even real-reasoned, it leads to dangerously short-sighted outcomes.

Let’s be clear: We’re not experiencing a crisis of shame. Shame serves an essential purpose in society, sown into countless religions, artistic traditions, politics, language, and even our biology. To the contrary, businesses and people alike must encourage shame when it shows up in the right places, and banish it from the wrong ones.

Forget shame. We’re experiencing a crisis of integrity.

Naming the problem’s the easy part. Recalibrating shame requires herculean effort; after all, it’s the bedrock upon which modern marketing was built. To break the chain, business leads by proving that the “deny, delay, defend” strategy is as effective as a Band-Aid on a broken limb. They need to show how quickly one can reap the cultural and financial rewards of making progress. They need a shame-less marketing playbook.

This strategy isn’t an anomaly; many ambitious brands are protecting their reputations and building their bottom lines this way. They’re replacing shame strategies with those prioritizing individual and societal worth. It’s proving effective and durable, even in our retrograde era.

Shame-less brands take a stand. When a billboard ad for chef and cookbook author Molly Baz's new line of lactation cookies was pulled for being “too racy,” the public revolted. The action implied that a pregnant body is indecent. When the situation wasn’t resolved to the public’s satisfaction, pediatric nutrition brand Bobbie stepped in. They bought the same corner in Times Square and put Molly back up—this time breastfeeding while shaking a bottle of formula, promoting different nutrition options for newborns.

This wasn’t Bobbie’s battle, technically, but the situation went against their company values. In one move, Bobbie celebrated mothers' natural bodies and the many ways caring for a baby can look—taking on two entrenched shame mechanics at once.

As consumers navigate the cultural reality of “right” and “wrong” being treated as suggestions rather than truth, brands earn allies for being arbiters of common sense. It can repair relationships that have weakened, and it can unite allies hungry for steadfast stances.

Shame-less brands keep their word. In 2015, forthcoming video game “No Man’s Sky” had spent years building hype about its procedurally generated worlds and an immersive approach to gaming never before seen. However, when the game finally launched with a laughably sparse environment and virtually no in-game mechanics, gamers raged. They saw it as another over-promise, under-deliver that they’d grown tired of, and they voiced their anger via review-bombing campaigns, en masse refund requests, and accusations of outright fraud.

The brand took the feedback in stride, spending the next decade releasing enormous free patches, updates, and upgrades. They turned critics into advocates by rebuilding their business model, delivering what had been promised, and never asking players to pay a single cent more.

Reception has been so strong that “No Man’s Sky” won the Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards in 2025, nine years after its wildly flawed launch. And updates are still coming.

Shame-less brands hold their ground. Plenty of retail and fashion brands have attempted The Big Reinvention (see Burberry, Yves Saint Laurent, or Halston). But Crocs wrote the contemporary playbook for making it work. Their early reputation—as heinous fashion crimes—was impossible to avoid. Instead of fighting the shame, they accepted it as the price of a product with superior comfort and utility. Their commitment morphed into a sort of countercultural kinship with Gen Z, shifting the conversation from shame in aesthetics to pride in individuality. And yes, it makes them bank.

Opinions, perspectives, and hot takes churn fast. Withstanding short-term shame, even when intense, can be a powerful act of integrity. And it earns preference and loyalty that’s impossible to buy.

The bottom line: Recalibration requires a strategy.

Adopting a shame-less strategy is far from easy to implement and requires navigating trade-offs. What do you want to be? What change do you want to make? Who do you want to be for? What revolution do you want to start? What legacy do you want to leave behind?

Given our cultural surge of shame doesn’t appear to be waning anytime soon, centering worth begins to look less like a fluffy, iffy tactic and more like an essential growth technique. Just take a look at our rising consumer generation: 87% of loyal consumers said their preferred brand made them feel good. And 50% of Gen Z agrees brands should play a role in making it easier to talk about stigmatized topics.

It’s a lot to take on at once. Maybe just start by looking at the “Man in the Mirror.”

About The Writer

Aaron Powers is a Partner of Strategy at SYLVAIN. Based in Los Angeles, he steers organizations through brand, product, design, and advertising challenges. He spends most of his time in the tech, entertainment, and financial services spaces with brands like Resy, Spotify, Netflix, and American Express. He is a co-host of SYLVAIN’s weekly podcast, Critical Nonsense.

About Progress Report

Progress Report is a bi-weekly newsletter about business and culture. Consider it a break from the work and fuel for the work.