The German sportswear giant Adidas, teamed with Arsenal Football club this week to promote the release of their new kit. However, errors were made in the marketing campaign, which allowed Twitter users to post racist and antisemitic messages via the official account for Adidas.
Adidas launched the social media campaign, #DareToCreate, in conjunction with the release of the kits, encouraging people to share a tweet advertising the brand using the hashtag, that automatically generated an image of the new Arsenal shirt with the name of the user’s Twitter Handle on the back.
Yet, not all users abided correctly as the account was hijacked by people with offensive Twitter Handles including @GasAllJewss, @MadelineMcCann and @96wasnotenough. As the campaign was automatically generated, the handles were not officially authorised and therefore were posted immediately to Adidas UK’s feed.
A spokesperson for Adidas said: “We have been made aware of the abuse of a Twitter personalisation mechanic created to allow excited fans to get their name on the back of the new jersey. Due to a small minority creative offensive versions of this, we have immediately turned of the functionality”.
Arsenal have also said: “We totally condemn the use of language of this nature, which has no place in our game or society’. The club added ‘we work hard as a club to encourage diversity and inclusion through our Arsenal for Everyone programme, launched in 2008 as a celebration of the diversity of the Arsenal family”.
By Liv West