Adidas social media campaign backfires and generates racist tweets

May this rookie mistake be a lesson for social media managers everywhere. Adidas has come under fire after a Twitter campaign to promote the release of its new Arsenal shirt backfired immensely, leading the brand to associate itself with racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and sexually explicit remarks.

Twitter users were encouraged to share a promotional tweet which automatically generated a customized picture of the shirt emblazoned with their Twitter username. The picture was then automatically retweeted by Adidas’ official Twitter account, along with the message “This is home. Welcome to the squad”. It didn’t take long for online trolls to start changing their usernames to have Adidas tweet images of shirts displaying offensive messages.

The offensive tweets have since been deleted, and both Adidas and Arsenal have apologized for the hijacking of their social media campaign.