DiGiorno Crashes Discussion on Domestic Violence With Pizza Joke

The release of security footage that showed now-ex Baltimore Raven Ray Rice punching his fiancee in the face spurred many female users of Twitter to discuss their own experiences with domestic violence. The ensuing discussion involving women’s stories of why they they stayed with or left their abusers was heartbreaking, powerful, and educational. It was not the place for a funny #brand #tweet.

Enter DiGiorno.

Eager to join in on the conversation in a cute, funny, and cool way, the bake-at-home pizza slinger added that another good reason for a person to stay is if they had a pizza.

Following understandable outrage, the likely underpaid person behind the brand’s Twitter account apologized, saying that they hadn’t read what the hashtag was about before weighing in.

Look: I get that we are entering the age of Peak Weird Brand, and that for the immediate future, at least, we will all have to accept that products have weird little wisecracking personalities on Twitter or get really friendly with the Mute button. Weird Branding a marketing ploy, but at least it’s one that occasionally veers into truly entertaining territory. But if you’re a social media manager and you’re going to jump on trending hashtags on a day a giant story about domestic violence dominates the headlines, it’s very important to make sure you’re not inadvertently making your brand sound like a Fox & Friends asshole before you join in.

After all, if pizza can’t even muster the decency to be better than Brian Kilmeade, what hope does humanity have?