SYDNEY: In yet another twitter-incident that is sure to make clients even more wary of ever allowing anything to be said on social media without a few hundred focus groups & meetings watering down any semblance of an idea, Clorox managed somehow to come off as weirdly racist with their recent emoji tweet.
Clorox, best-known for turning things white, is red-faced over a misguided tweet that it’s since yanked.
The bleach kingpin has apologized for a since-deleted tweet that showed a Clorox bottle made up of the new set of Apple’s very ethnically diverse emojis that were part of the iOS 8.3 update this week.
The image was fine. But the words that Clorox choose to tweet next to it certainly weren’t: “New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach?”
That awkward phrasing meant to ask why bleach wasn’t among the dozens of other assorted household items that were added to Apple’s emojis. But in the social media world, the comments were interpreted — Clorox might say, misinterpreted — to mean, that its bleach could somehow white-out the diversity.
“Black emojis were added today. Saying this implies you’d rather the emojis be only white, by adding bleach,” tweeted IAmPeace (Adrienne).
Another tweet from W.E. Blanche DuBois asked, “Did ya’ll bleach away the delete button?”:
For Clorox, the ill-fated tweet is a lesson in humility. The tweet, and its reference to emojis, were meant to directly appeal to generation of Millennials who are increasingly color-blind and tech-savvy. But the misguided Clorox tweet came off looking and feeling clueless.
