Clorox Doesn't Think Things Through

by Elizabeth Lemuz

PR Daily

Earlier this week Clorox posted a controversial tweet on social media. It was the above image of the Clorox bottle with the copy “New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach”. This tweet grabbed the attention of many people and it wasn’t in a positive way.

Social media outlets like Twitter are great when trying to get information out there the quickest. There comes a lot of responsibility when using tools like Twitter, especially when it comes to a name brand like Clorox.

This tweet was sent out after the new emoji craze began. Apple now has released a new set of emojis where the public can change the skin color of the people emojis. The Washington Post recently published an article discussing how the new emojis are actually causing a lot more problems than before.

“The emojis are being used to make racist comments on social media and insert questions of race in texts and tweets where it may never have risen before. Instead of correcting its mistake--excluding people of color from emojis--Apple has, in some ways, made the situation worse.” (The Washington Post).

The post suggests that Apple has made this entire situation much worse than it was before. It is easy to understand where people may not like this new feature since it may cause problems with people. An article from The Washington Post titled “Apple’s new diverse emojis are more problematic than before”, mentions the Clorox tweet as well saying that “Clorox already has felt the weight of that reality, when in response to the new emojis, the brand tweeted ‘where’s the bleach?’”.

According to “Clorox tries to wash away emoji tweet” an article in PR Daily, Clorox did tweet an apology, but it took them a while to erase the original tweet that cause so much controversy.

I personally don’t believe that Clorox did the right thing by posting that tweet since they knew that the majority of the public would take it this way. If you look closely at the picture that Clorox tweeted, they didn’t use any type of people emoji to create the bottle of Clorox. It is definitely controversial just like anything else, but Clorox should be smarter when it comes to posting tweets of these sorts.

Citations:

“Clorox tries to wash away emoji tweet”. PR Daily. Ragan Communications, 2015. Web. 10 April 2015. http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/18438.aspx

“Apple’s new diverse emojis are more problematic than before”. The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 2015. Web. 10 April 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/04/10/how-apples-new-multicultural-emojis-are-more-racist-than-before/