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Red Lobster is hammered for its lame Twitter response to Beyoncé

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Yesterday, Beyoncé dropped a new song called “Formation” ahead of her Super Bowl halftime performance.

While the song immediately captured the Internet’s attention, her fans, a.k.a. The Beyhive, took notice of a particularly racy lyric mentioning a brand: “When he fuck me good I take his ass to Red Lobster, cause I slay,” sings Beyoncé.

Talk about publicity any brand would crave.

Unfortunately, looks like Red Lobster didn’t crave it enough. The lyric sent Twitter into a frenzy waiting for Red Lobster to respond:

Well, it took Red Lobster eight hours, but it finally responded with… this: 

Red Lobster’s tweet racked up a combined 19,000 making it one of it’s most retweeted and liked posts ever. Despite the popularity, it didn’t win over the Beyhive, which were anticipating something, let’s say, snappier. One of the reasons they didn’t like the response was how late it came, with people dragging the brand and its agency for its tardiness, as seen here:

It’s especially strange that it took the brand so long to respond. “Formation” already has 7 million views on YouTube, and if there’s a certain weekend brands need to be alert, it’s this, Super Bowl weekend, which is basically social media Christmas for brands.

If there’s a bright side for Red Lobster, at least Beyoncé still likes it.

https://digiday.com/?p=160425

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