Join us Sept. 14-16 in Miami to connect with top publishing leaders
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
WTF are fandoms, and why are marketers chasing them?
Marketers want more than customers. They’re chasing fandom to turn audiences into communities.
OpenAI is sharpening its focus on enterprise advertisers
The company is hiring a dedicated marketing role aimed at positioning OpenAI as a ‘premium advertising platform for the world’s marketers’.
The new AI playbook: The rules brands are setting around customer-facing content
For some brands, AI platforms and services are proving to be game-changing for their ability to speed up creative processes, and save money.