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What Brands Must Understand About Culture, Consent, and Public Perception
- Rhonda Glynn
- 18 hours ago
- 4 min read
Why the backlash was predictable - and what every business owner, brand manager, and founder should learn from it.
In the lead-up to the "Reign Of The Merry Monarch" aka "Trinidad Carnival" something has happened that many people are calling a "morality debate".
It isn’t.
What it is, is a branding, positioning, and public-trust lesson - and if you run a business in the Caribbean (or any community-driven market), you should be paying very close attention.
A Carnival band included a “Rose” - a female pleasure device - inside a swag bag for masqueraders.
Within hours, social media erupted.
🗣️ Church groups were upset.
🗣️ Parents were concerned.
🗣️ Sponsors were uneasy.
🗣️ Commentators were divided.
And immediately the public discussion turned into:
“Has Carnival gone too far?”
But that question actually misses the "real issue".
Because the controversy wasn’t caused by the object.
It was caused by context.
Carnival Is Not "Just An Event".
This is the first thing marketers outside the region - and even some inside it -misunderstand.
Carnival is also not just "entertainment".
Carnival functions simultaneously as:
📌 A national identity symbol
📌 A tourism product
📌 A cultural heritage institution
📌 An economic engine
📌 A family tradition
📌 A spiritual and historical expression
Very few spaces hold all those meanings at once.
And when a space carries "shared emotional ownership", marketing inside that space becomes very different from marketing inside a nightclub, festival, or private event.
That's because people do not merely "attend" Carnival...
They feel they belong to it.
That distinction matters.
Because when belonging is disrupted, reactions become emotional rather than rational.
The Real Problem: Audience vs Stakeholder
The band in question made a classic strategic "mistake":
They planned for their customer and ignored their stakeholder.
👉🏽 The customer: Adult masqueraders.
👉🏽 The stakeholders: The public.
And in Carnival, "the public" is vast:
🔔 Families
🔔 Returning diaspora
🔔 Sponsors
🔔 Policymakers
🔔 International media
🔔 Tourism authorities
🔔 Religious communities
So while the band’s intention may have been "adult-focused", the interpretation became national.
And marketing is never judged by intention.
It is judged by interpretation.
Key Lesson:
Your brand is defined by how your message is received, not how it was meant.
Why The Backlash Happened
This is important.
Trinidad & Tobago is not culturally unfamiliar with sensual expression.
Carnival itself contains elements of performance, rhythm, dance, and body celebration.
So why did this particular moment ignite reaction?
Because this crossed a boundary between private behavior and public symbolism.
The issue was not sexuality.
The issue was public meaning.
A private adult product became a public cultural statement.
And once something becomes symbolic, people respond to "what it represents" - not what it is.
A Core Marketing Rule
A product is "rarely" controversial.
A placement is.
This means that the same item can exist peacefully in one environment and create backlash in another.
In marketing strategy, this is called contextual alignment.
When a product does not match the emotional expectation of its environment...
The audience does not only debate - they react.
What Should Have Been Done
The partnership itself was not the strategic error.
The delivery was.
Instead of including the item in a public swag bag, the brand could have created:
🌹 A private, opt-in adult wellness activation
🌹 A women’s health conversation
🌹 An education-based experience
Then the narrative becomes:
Female wellness and autonomy.
Instead, the narrative became:
National values and cultural boundaries.
One is a conversation...
The other is a confrontation.
The "Larger" Business Lesson
This applies to founders more than they realize.
Every business introduces new ideas into a social environment.
However, when the idea moves faster than audience understanding, resistance occurs.
This is especially true for:
💼 Bold positioning
💼 Disruptive branding
💼 Culturally sensitive markets
💼 Community-based economies
Because here's the thing...
Visibility without preparation creates backlash.
Preparation creates acceptance.
Narrative Control
One of the "most overlooked skills" in business is narrative framing.
If a brand does not explain its decision early, the public explains it for them.
And the public explanation is usually harsher.
Brands rarely collapse because of a "controversial idea".
They collapse because they lose control of meaning.
Final Takeaway
The controversy was never "really" about a product.
It was about who gets to decide what a "shared cultural space" represents.
And this is the lesson founders should carry forward:
📢You are not only "managing" marketing.
📢You are managing "interpretation".
Because in today’s world, perception travels faster than advertising .
And meaning travels faster than intent.
Closing
Strong brands don’t avoid difficult conversations.
They anticipate how people will understand them before the conversation begins.
And the businesses that learn this early don’t just grow...