Brand safety today is less about avoiding the obviously offensive and more about navigating context at scale. When Bad Bunny stepped onto the world’s biggest musical stage in front of more than 130 million viewers at the Super Bowl half time show, the performance itself was only part of the risk calculus. In a polarized cultural climate, he carries political, linguistic, and identity implications that represent potential reputational risk for brands who are not clear on their values in a moment that will reverberate for weeks.
What once would have been a straightforward celebrity-focused celebration meant to lift brands at the world's biggest advertising platform now demands scenario planning. Like last year with Lamar Kendrick, he risk not only covers what was said and shown in those 15 minutes, but how it will be differently interpreted by multiple audiences simultaneously.
Reactions to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime appearance have surfaced familiar cultural and political fault lines, underscoring why moments of mass attention now demand heightened brand-safety scrutiny.
Public response to the announcement of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer fractured along partisan, generational, and racial lines. Enthusiasm was strongest among younger, multicultural audiences. After winning three Grammy’s, including Album of the Year, Bad Bunny’s resonance with Gen Z, Millennials, and Hispanic consumers offers clear upside in engagement and affinity for companies seeking cultural credibility or multicultural reach.
However, a single cultural moment can be read as either celebration or provocation, depending on the lens applied.
Objections to his Spanish-language performance and outspoken political views were concentrated among older and more conservative groups. Some erroneously called for a US citizen to be the entertainer. Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican. Sad, but for advertisers a potential conservative backlash could be significant at the pricey tune of $8-10 million for a 30-second commercial during the big game.
These cultural moments necessitate that brands must be exceptionally confident in their brand values as these values will need to sustain them if moments spin out of control.
Perceptions of political alignment and selective outrage, as well as the rapid spread of individual points-of-view, if not downright misinformation around brand alignments, suggest that brand safety is about anticipating how context, audience segmentation, and algorithmic amplification can transform visibility into volatility.
As such, modern day brand safety requires ever more planning and anticipation. Your content choices must be based in a solid understanding of brand values and personality, and what kind of flexibility your brand can sustain in tough cultural moments. Brand safety strategies must be sufficiently proactive, appropriately contextual, and steeped in the right checks & balances.
Brands must anticipate cultural flashpoints, understand how social media systems amplify risk, and have clear protocols for mitigating risk in brand messaging.
In an environment where “the world will dance” can be read as a celebration or provocation, brand safety isn’t about playing it safe. It’s about knowing your brand strength.