What you’ll read:
- Getting bad reviews can lead to real business opportunities.
- Companies can consider the nature of the reviews they’re receiving, sorting unfair claims from valuable feedback that can lead to improvements.
When bad reviews pour in, brands tend to respond in one of a ways. Some companies ignore their detractors. Others take legal action to sue strangers into silence. Some, however, lean into the joke.
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Studies have shown that unfair negative reviews can boost companies’ reputations even more than positive reviews. That’s why some brands are bold enough to take a creative approach. Here’s how three brands used negative feedback from customers not just as valuable information, but as fuel for enticing and even cheeky campaigns.
Olay: Open to Change
Instead of shying away from one-star reviews, skincare brand Olay splashed their customers’ negative feedback front and center across their new campaign: “Open to Change, Open for All.” The campaign centers around real quotes from customers with personal experience of the reality that most beauty brands don’t design their products to work for people with physical disabilities. “I literally cannot open the stupid jar on my own,” said one reviewer. “I have tried allll [sic] night to get this jar open. Please please make this easier,” said another.
In the print and digital campaign, Olay introduces its redesigned jar “for women with dexterity issues, limb differences, and sight challenges.” The new lid is easy to open with one hand and features a braille label identifying the specific product. Olay didn’t just own up to past failures around accessible design and they didn’t stop at empty promises. Instead, the brand invested in creating an entirely new product design — with input from women of all abilities — that fully responded to the feedback they had received.
The lid is a limited edition first-run design, so it remains to be seen how far the brand will take the concept. “It’s just a small first step,” Olay said in a print ad, “but if we all take small steps together, we can make beauty more inclusive for all.”
OUAI: Mean Reviews
Hair, body, and fragrance brand OUAI has developed something of a cult reputation among the beauty set. But not every product can be a hit, a lesson OUAI learned the hard way thanks to its Dry Shampoo. Instead of burying the negative feedback and releasing a new product with no explanation, the brand created a “Mean Reviews” video in which founder Jen Atkin and other members of the team read out customer feedback on the original, less than stellar product.
“Mean Reviews” clearly takes inspiration from Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets segment, in which celebrity guests read unpleasant things total strangers have said about them online. As the OUAI team reads each negative review, they cringe at the harsh feedback or sit frozen in shock. A couple of them even clap back. But the point of the video isn’t just mean reviews for mean reviews’ sake. Instead, it highlights how OUAI took negative feedback and went back to the drawing board to give the product a makeover.
“We’re not perfect and we aren’t afraid to shy away from the truth — especially when that truth is on the internet for everyone to read,” said OUAI. The campaign ends on reviews about the redesigned Super Dry Shampoo product, which transform comments like “This is the worst dry shampoo to ever exist on planet Earth” into the much more promising: “OUAI is life.”
Vienna Tourism Board: Unrating Vienna
The Vienna Tourism Board took the bull by the horns in its “Unrating Vienna” campaign. In ads online and across London and Hamburg, the campaign points out the unreliable side of negative reviews. A two-star review of the Schönbrunn Zoo read “I don’t like zoos.” Someone rated Vienna Ice World with one star, then wrote: “Can’t skate.” In response to these unfair and unfounded negative reviews, Vienna asks a provocative question: Who gets to decide what you like and what you do?
“Anyone who plans a holiday based purely on ratings stands a good chance of missing out,” reads the Unrating Vienna campaign website. In one installation of the campaign, the Tourism Board projected negative reviews of the acclaimed Leopold Museum on the side of the museum building itself. Among the gems of informed art criticism the campaign captured: “mostly nudes” and “too many artworks.”
The ads encourage travelers to think, explore, and experience for themselves, instead of relying on feedback left by anonymous strangers on the internet. Breathtaking Viennese vistas paired with the words “the view is rubbish” and sprawling castle grounds tucked behind a review like “lawn is a mess” demonstrate exactly what tourists will miss if they trust what they read online instead of stepping into the world and seeing the sights with their own eyes.
Getting blasted online can lead to real business opportunities. Companies should take the time to consider the nature of the reviews they’re receiving, sorting unfair claims from valuable feedback that can lead to improvements. As long as brands sort out their intentions and keep their hearts in the right place, both kinds of bad reviews have the potential to inspire creative interpretations.