Does it seem like there are more advertising apologies than there used to be? A few months ago Apple said sorry for their iPad commercial that showed beloved examples of analogue creativity being crushed in a giant metal press. Two weeks later Bumble had to issue an apology for running a billboard that suggested a vow of celibacy was ‘not the answer’.

In July adidas apologised for an insensitive ad campaign based around the revival of a shoe they had made for the 1972 Munich Olympics. Those games are notorious for an incident in which Palestinian militants killed 11 members of the Israeli team, so they also had to apologise to their model, the famously Palestinian Bella Hadid.

But they’re just the latest in what feels like an acceleration of mea culpas, particularly for ads that have featured accidental or thoughtless racism. In 2018, H&M apologised for showing a Black child modelling their ‘Coolest Monkey in the Jungle’ hoodie. In 2017, Dove apologised for promoting a facial wash that appeared to show a Black model becoming a white model after using the product. Also in 2017, Nivea apologised for running an ad featuring the line ‘White is Purity’, which was sadly taken up by white supremacists.