Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola has pulled its #MakeItHappy brand campaign, which it introduced during the Super Bowl, after being tricked by pop culture blog Gawker into tweeting lines of "Mein Kampf."
- The campaign aimed to dispel negative comments on the Internet by enabling users to tag negative comments with #MakeItHappy, which Coca-Cola then turned into cute, happy pictures using ASCII lettering code.
- Gawker first made the company inadvertently tweet a dog picture created with the 14-word white nationalism slogan. Taking it one step further, Gawker created the Twitter handle @MeinCoke and fed the #MakeItHappy campaign lines from "Mein Kampf" to see if Coke would turn those lines from Hitler's manifesto into word art. It did.
Dive Insight:
Coca-Cola has been trying its hardest to appease a wider population as customers turn away in droves, first with its stevia-sweetened Coca-Cola Life, then a less sweet Canadian Coke recipe, a premium milk product, and now positive messages and digital smiles. The company wants to appeal to consumers who lead both physically and mentally healthier lifestyles, but the jury is out as to whether any of these attempts will amount to a return to the soft drink king.
Coca-Cola responded to this debacle with a statement: "It's unfortunate that Gawker is trying to turn this campaign into something that it isn't. Building a bot that attempts to spread hate through #MakeItHappy is a perfect example of the pervasive online negativity Coca-Cola wanted to address with this campaign."
