DiGiorno Dishes out a Blow to Its Brand and to Domestic Violence Victims
When people hear about abusive relationships, their most frequently asked follow-up question is why the victim did not leave his or her abuser sooner. Having worked with a countless number of domestic violence victims and hearing their stories, I can say with certainty that there is no simple answer to that question and it varies for everyone. After all, these victims experience a roller coaster of emotions on a daily basis: isolation, confusion, shame, humiliation, and an inability to make decisions to name just a few. In addition, the fear of the unknown can paralyze victims and prevent them from taking any action. And while some victims do leave, many decide to return, sometimes more than once, before ultimately deciding to leave for good. In fact, the average number of times that a victim leaves before leaving for good is SEVEN times.[1]
In Fall of 2014, DiGiorno, the market leader in frozen pizza that prides itself on not being delivery, delivered what many perceived to be a low blow to domestic violence victims and survivors through its tweet:
The origins of the “WhyIStayed” hashtag were rooted in a domestic violence conversation that had stemmed out of a public announcement made by Janay Palmer Rice. Palmer Rice, who was seen being beaten by her husband in a highly publicized video, had announced her decision to stay with her husband, NFL player Ray Rice. Not surprisingly this decision created quite a buzz on social media platforms and resulted in a slew of victim-blaming comments. In response, many domestic violence victims took to social media to explain the victim’s mindset and to share their own experiences using the “WhyIStayed” hashtag.
In light of the serious nature of the discussion, it was shocking that DiGiorno, which explained that it was unaware of the meaning of the hashtag or why it was trending, used the opportunity to make such a flippant remark to push its product. This seemingly innocent tweet was viewed by many as incredibly insensitive to the deep psychological and emotional trauma that domestic violence victims experience when making a decision as to whether to stay or leave their abuser. Clearly, DiGiorno did not have a good system in place for researching trending hashtags and understanding their context before using them. After all, a company of its size and success would presumably know better than to use a trending hashtag associated with such a serious and heartfelt conversation as an opportunity to promote pizza — or to make light of such a serious issue.
Such a failure could have been prevented by having a simple quality control system in place for checking the context of hashtags and why they are trending before using them. In addition, while it is great for a company to have real time conversations whenever possible, the company — and all companies using social media for that matter — should also have a team of people vetting its tweets to minimize mistakes like these from being dished out.
This post is part of a blog series for a Social Media Management course that I am taking at MIT Sloan School of Management. For this blog, we were asked to find an example of a social media “brand fail” and analyze what went wrong and why, and whether the failure could have been anticipated or prevented.
[1] http://www.domesticabuseshelter.org/infodomesticviolence.htm
