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
Electronic Arts is betting that in-game ads can out-earn CTV
To make in-game ads stick, EA has built its own stack rather than rent one. Now it wants to shape the standards before anyone else does.
Future of Marketing Briefing: Why Bose is building an entertainment company
Bose has a new entertainment division. Its CMO hasn’t used a creative agency in five years. The two things are related.
The rise of pharma ad tech
Insiders say it comes at the cost of legacy platforms such as DSPs and SSPs.