For businesses, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool. The free attention that social media can bring to brands helps them engage and build relationships with customers, but sometimes brands get attention for all the wrong reasons. Just one post gone wrong can spark controversy and the Internet isn’t always forgiving.
These are some of the epic brand fails on social media in 2022:
- Burger King’s tone-deaf Pride Campaign - During Pride month, brands like to show their ally-ship, but sometimes in strange ways. Like Burger King Austria, that tried a “two equal buns” Whopper campaign. It showed burger ingredients between two Sesame top buns or two bottom buns, claiming it represented “equal love and equal rights.” People weren’t happy about it and members of the LGBTQ community called it out for the sexual innuendo.
- Duolingo’s Amber Heard TikTok comment - The language learning app made a misstep when it posted a comment during the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial, which was all over TikTok at the time. Duolingo’s account commented, “Y’all think Amber watches TikTok?” under a clip of Heard’s testimony, but it was later deleted after commenters slammed it for cracking jokes about domestic violence.
- Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover - To say that Musk’s acquisition has been chaotic would be an understatement. Controversy includes him gutting the workforce and demanding a “hardcore” work ethic from staffers who stayed, and the in-office bedrooms he built for them. Product releases have also been all over the place and Musk has been called out for his own tweets, including for misusing gender pronouns, as well as Twitter suspending several journalists who were critical of Musk.
- PBR’s “poor judgement” - The beer brand took a lot of heat for their Dry January post, when they tweeted, “Not drinking this January? Try eating *ss!” Pabst Blue Ribbon was slammed for both mocking those staying sober for the month and throwing in a sexual reference for shock value. They apologized for the “poor judgement,” blaming it on one employee.
- Radio Shack’s questionable tweets - The electronics brand has filed for bankruptcy twice in the last decade and seemed to be trying to grab attention by any means necessary this year. Their tweets include “it’s Halloween but the only thing I’m scared of is women” on October 31st, “6 inches is enough” on October 17th, and June 24th’s “Theres a reason your dad left for milk 15 years ago and still hasn't come back. Bitch" which was in response to a tweet that said, "there's a reason why your 98% of your stores closed down".
- Tampax’s off-color joke - The tampon brand tweeted a racy joke in late November, “You’re in their DMs. We’re in them. We are not the same.” Some Twitter users felt the tweet “offensively sexualized people who menstruate” and the #BoycottTampax hashtag soon followed. Tampax deleted it, apologized and hasn’t tweeted since.
Source: Insider