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
Digiday+ Research: Amazon gets an even stronger hold over retail media
It looks like Amazon’s stronghold on retail media is getting stronger, not weaker, even as players like Walmart and Target get further into the retail media space and more retailers enter it.
Marketers are calmer about TikTok’s future in the U.S. — even as its ads team thins out
As the April 5 deadline looms, the panic has curiously subsided.
Marketing Briefing: Marketers push for more flexible retail media deals amidst economic uncertainty
As if the retail media boom isn’t under enough scrutiny, new tariffs and talk of economic recession have sparked more questions about the negotiation process.