Tesco apologises for ‘hit the hay tweet’, then reveals it has edited out a horse from latest TV ad
Tesco has continued to be plagued by PR disasters following the revelation that its burgers were found to have horse DNA in them, most recently by an unchecked tweet and advert showing humorous scenes of a horse.
Just days after Tesco hit the news for selling Everyday Value burgers containing horse meat, it unwittingly tweeted a message to its 47,000 followers saying: “It’s sleepy time so we’re off to hit the hay.”
The unintentional pun, sent on Thursday evening, saw over 2,700 retweets and nearly 700 people comment.
Shortly afterwards, a staff member appeared to realise the unfortunate choice of words and apologised, saying: "I'm terribly sorry.
"That tweet was scheduled before we knew of the current situation. We'd never intend to make light of it."
Just as it couldn’t get any worse for Tesco, a spokesman subsequently revealed that the supermarket giant has been forced to scrap a segment of its latest advert as it was due to include images of a horse.
The horse was apparently set to be used in a humorous context, however the spokesman said: “We have re-edited a new advert which had included a horse in the original version. It will be broadcast next week.”