Social Media, How Does It Work?
It only lived for 10 seconds Monday night, but DiGiorno Pizza has learned that tweets are impossible to take back. The incident perfectly illustrates why one should think before tweeting.
DiGiorno Pizza has become one of the top brands on Twitter thanks to its quick wit and good ear for real-time conversations, but one careless tweet last night put that reputation at risk.
After a video of Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee Janay Palmer led to his termination from the Baltimore Ravens on Monday, thousands of women took to Twitter to discuss their physically and emotionally tortuous experiences in abusive relationships. They used the #WhyIStayed hashtag to fight the victim-blaming attitude of Palmer’s critics, who had questioned why she would marry a man who knocked her unconscious.
Jumping onto the popular hashtag, DiGiorno clearly didn’t look into its context before tweeting, “#whyistayed You had pizza.”
The backlash was swift, and within minutes the tweet had been deleted. The brand then posted the apology above, noting: “A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.”
More: DiGiorno Is Really, Really Sorry About Its Tweet Accidentally Making Light of Domestic Violence
As Jared Keller noted at the end of his piece at News.Mic:
It’s not delivery. It’s disaster.