DiGiorno Pizza apologises for not checking #WhyIStayed hashtag before jumping on bandwagon
DiGiorno Pizza has apologised for tweeting “#WhyIStayed You had pizza”, without checking the reason the hashtag was trending.
Both #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft were trending as survivors of domestic violence told how they survived and escaped their situations.
Having deleted its original tweet, DiGiorno said it had “not read what the hashtag was about before posting.”
A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.
— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014
We heard from many of you, and we know we disappointed you. We understand, and we apologize to everyone for this mistake. — DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014
The community manager has since apologised to every person complaining individually, and admitted “not researching the hashtag before using it is an inexcusable and highly avoidable mistake”.
This is not the first time such a mistake has happened: in 2012, Celebboutique caused a Twitter storm when it blithely tweeted ‘#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired #Aurora dress;)’, not realising about the cinema massacre which had taken place.