Outrage as a Business Model: What Sydney Sweeney's Latest Ad Teaches Us About Marketing
Most companies spend their marketing budgets trying to be liked. Novig, a small prediction-market app, appears to have tried something riskier and possibly smarter: getting people angry.
An ad built to be noticed
The company's new one-minute spot stars actress Sydney Sweeney, almost entirely unclothed, posing with sports equipment. Footballs, a basketball hoop and hockey gear do most of the work her wardrobe normally would. The pitch itself is almost wholesome by comparison. Novingpresents itself as a betting platform that sticks to sports, with no wagers on wars, deaths or elections.
The contrast between the message and the imagery is hard to miss, and that is probably the point. Released online in mid-September, the ad had drawn over 40 million views within days, according to reporting by The New York Times. Much of that attention came from people who were furious about it.
The athletes respond
The strongest pushback came from women in sport. Former gymnast Gracie Kramer posted a montage of female athletes training and competing, framing it as what women in sport actually look like. The format caught on quickly. Skiers, sprinters, basketball players and water polo players posted videos of their own, turning a single reaction into a small movement. British sprinter Amy Hunt joined in on live television, speaking to the BBC right after running a 200-meter final.
Kramer told the Times that she had spent her career having her body commented on instead of her ability. For her, the ad reinforced exactly that habit. Critics like her argue that reducing athletes to their appearance erases the years of training behind their results, and that a sports brand should know better.
The defense
Not everyone agreed. Many online defended Sweeney as an adult woman making her own choices about her image and doing the job she was hired for. Raquel Debono, who founded the right-leaning group Make America Hot Again, argued that the outrage was hypocritical. In her view, the same people who once championed sexual freedom were now scandalized by a nude ad.
Sweeney herself stayed quiet, at least directly. Instead she shared images from past ESPN photo shoots in which elite athletes, including Serena Williams and Sue Bird, had posed nude. The message was implicit but clear: nudity and serious athleticism have shared a frame before.
Why a small brand would court controversy
For students of economics and business, the more interesting question is not whether the ad was tasteful, but whether the backlash was part of the plan.
Joshua Lewis, a marketing professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, told the Times that for a company with little market share, "polarizing people is a reasonable strategy." The logic is straightforward. A challenger brand cannot outspend established competitors on traditional advertising, but it can generate attention cheaply if people are talking about it. And if the people most offended are not the people the brand wants as customers, their anger costs little. It may even help by amplifying the message.
Novig's target audience makes this plausible. Prediction-market users are majority male, according to research by Morning Consult. A campaign that alienates some female viewers while appealing to its core demographic may look like a trade-off worth making on a spreadsheet. The result, at least in the short term, was a jump in visibility. A company few people had heard of became roughly as recognizable as its better-funded rivals, Kalshi and Polymarket. Sweeney also reportedly holds equity in Novig, which gives her a direct stake in how that attention converts.
A familiar playbook
If this feels familiar, it's because we have seen it before. In 2025, Sweeney fronted an American Eagle campaign built on a pun between "jeans" and "genes." Critics read it as racially coded, others dismissed that reading as absurd, and the ad became a national talking point, reaching all the way to President Trump. American Eagle's sales and share price were widely reported to have benefited. Sweeney later said she had simply seen it as a jeans ad, and she has continued working with the brand.
Then there was Dr. Squatch, which sold a limited-edition soap marketed as containing her bathwater, a stunt designed to be shared, mocked and remembered.
Podcaster and author Katie Gatti Tassin describes these campaigns as following a recognizable sequence. A brand books a provocative shoot, the shoot draws criticism, and the criticism rallies conservative audiences to defend the brand. Whether or not every step is planned, the pattern has now repeated often enough that marketers are clearly paying attention.
The culture-war layer
It is difficult to separate the marketing from the politics around it. Sweeney is a registered Republican, and her lingerie brand, Syrn, partnered this year with Stagecoach, a country music festival popular with conservative audiences. Some of her supporters argue that this is why she faces more scrutiny than other celebrities who do similar work. Debono has described a kind of role reversal in American culture. The left, once associated with sexual liberation, is now cast as prudish, while parts of the right are rebranding around confident, sexualized femininity.
Critics reject that framing. For them, the issue is not who Sweeney votes for but what the ad communicates, particularly in a sports context where women still fight for equal pay, coverage and respect.
When a small brand can't outspend its competitors, it can try to out-provoke them. Novig has shown that the first part works. Whether outrage can build a lasting business is a question the next few quarters will answer.
Reporting drawn in part from The New York Times.
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