(USA) 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, 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."
Of course, the backlash was brutal. And DiGiorno Pizza
had to apologize over and over again. They did their best to respond to every
angry tweet and one must commend their social team for taking the high and
difficult road.
Each response has been personalized and is clearly sincere,
which is a nice reprieve from the usual copy-and-paste approach to dealing with
bad PR in social.
A clear lesson to everyone: KNOW WHAT THE HASHTAG IS
ABOUT BEFORE YOU USE IT.
