Secure your place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, March 23-25
It was just a matter of time before some tone-deaf brand used today, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, as a social media marketing ploy. Amazingly, the guilty party was the Golf Channel.
This morning, as @jyarow pointed out, the Golf Channel tweeted:
MLK was most likely not talking about hitting the links when he said he had a dream. The Golf Channel has since deleted the tweet.
The Golf Channel is a property of NBC, which is running the broader “DreamDay” hashtag. But something about mixing golf programming and historic civil rights events struck many online as a catastrophic duff.
This isn’t the first time a brand has attempted to glom onto the historical and social importance of Martin Luther King Jr.’s groundbreaking speech. Last year Taco Bell shamelessly plugged itself in this dream-themed tweet.
Not to be outdone, Staples similarly used MLK Day as an excuse for this silly tweet earlier this year.
Image via Flickr
More in Marketing
‘Nobody’s asking the question’: WPP’s biggest restructure in years means nothing until CMOs say it does
WPP declared itself transformed. CMOs will decide if that’s true.
Why a Gen Alpha–focused skin-care brand is giving equity to teen creators
Brands are looking for new ways to build relationships that last, and go deeper than a hashtag-sponsored post.
Pitch deck: How ChatGPT ads are being sold to Criteo advertisers
OpenAI has the ad inventory. Criteo has relationships with advertisers. Here’s how they’re using them.