A screenshot of Justine Sacco’s tweet.
When the idiom ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’ was first recorded in 1576, I doubt the author thought that there would ever be something called ‘social media’ 5 centuries later. On Friday the 20th of December 2013, I came across a tweet ‘Going to Africa. I hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding I’m white’ tweeted by Justine Sacco (@JustineSacco).’ on my timeline. I somehow ignored that tweet. to my surprise @JustinSacco was trending Saturday morning along with a hastag ‘#HasJustinLandedYet‘ (which had over 100 000 tweets) Justine deleted her twitter account, but the damage had already been done.
Click here to read a post titled ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’ published in January 2013
#HadJustineLandedyet twitter activity screenshot.
(Source: http://www.topsy.com)
Click here to see the tweets.
On Sunday, Justine issued an apology & ‘New24‘ also reported that she had been dismissed by her employer over the tweet.
Whilst people were using the hashtag to attack Justine, ‘Aid for Africa’ took the opportunity to ask for donations & also raise awareness about AIDS.
@AidforAfrica tweets
From the above, it is clear that ‘Aid For Africa‘ used Justine’s tragedy to increase awareness for their brand.
Click here to read how ‘Woolworths SA’ successfully leveraged on ‘Madela’s’ death whilst ‘Richard Branson’ was accused for Blatant advertising for attempting to do so.
