If you’ve been online this past week, you’ve seen the uproar over the new Peloton bike commercial. If you haven’t seen the commercial, a man (holding his daughter’s hand) has his wife cover her eyes on Christmas morning, and voila – there’s a Peloton bike, which she is very excited about receiving.

The rest of the spot is her yearlong journey with the bike, as chronicled by the woman’s selfie videos. On her first ride, she admits she’s nervous but excited. Then she celebrates riding the bike five days in a row, and later, getting up at 6 a.m. for a ride that was tough but worth it! The next shot is her working out with her daughter in the room, doing homework. The final scene of the commercial is the woman showing her video chronicle to her husband and daughter, telling them, “A year ago, I didn’t realize how much this would change me.”

The spot is called “the gift that gives back,” and on the surface, it is a story about determination, self-care and a loving husband who buys his wife a gift she values.

Until the world has to weigh in. Within a day or two of the spot’s debut on Nov. 21, the internet had officially gone berserk. 

Suddenly the spot was about a man fat-shaming his wife (the actress who plays the wife looks very healthy even before she receives the bike), somehow he’s forcing her to exercise, etc. Commenters surmised that the wife was just exercising to please her husband and that he was making her document her workouts as proof of her commitment. 

And a different group of people thought the spot was elitist because the bike costs $2,400. Which has nothing to do with this specific spot – it’s what the bike has always cost.

By Dec. 8, the YouTube version of the video on the Peloton page had been viewed over 7 million times. Fifteen thousand people liked it, and over 20,000 disliked it. There were news stories, social memes, and Ryan Reynolds hired the commercial’s actress to star in a spoof spot for gin.

Of course, there’s been the predictable backlash to the backlash, and so it goes. Peloton has responded that people are misinterpreting the spot and that the company is simply representing what it hears every day – that its customers credit the bike and workouts as having a significant impact on them.

What does this mean for all of us as marketers? It means that our work is under a different type of scrutiny than it’s ever been exposed to before. Consumers can impose meaning on our marketing efforts and communications and then take to social channels to stir up a crowd. And it does not take much to gather a stone-throwing crowd these days.

Every company’s marketing strategy today has to include a crisis communications plan that prepares you for any sort of disaster, including a social media firestorm, whether it is deserved or not. Peloton’s strategy has been to say very little and just wait out the storm. They’re fortunate they can take that stand. 

For many brands, that stoic position would not be a viable option. They wouldn’t be able to endure that kind of negative exposure. How about your organization? Could you withstand that kind of scrutiny?

If you answered yes, how exactly did you access that readiness? 

In next week’s column, we’ll talk about what a modern-day crisis communications plan needs to include and how you can prepare for something you can’t imagine or anticipate. It would be a very worthwhile project to put on your to-do list for 2020.