Donald Trump Jr. sent a tweet comparing a bowl of Skittles to Syrian refugees and sparked a social media firestorm.
Wrigleys, the maker of Skittles, responded with a curt statement.
“Skittles are candy. Refugees are people,” Vice President of Corporate Affairs Denise Young said in a statement. “We don’t feel it’s an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing.”
Typically, brands have had the opportunity to latch on to current events in real time, responding via fun, and often whimsical, tweets to draw attention to their brands. For example, we all remember the blackout during the Super Bowl when Oreo jumped in and tweeted, “You Can Still Dunk in the Dark.”
However, the Skittles tweet drew immediate anger with people tweeting out photos of children bloodied in the Syrian conflict, including the photo of little Omran Daqneesh, bloodied and covered in dust sitting in the back of an ambulance that shocked people and quickly spread around the world. Read the article …
According to the BBC, the photographer who took the Skittles photo and posted it on Flickr has revealed himself as a refugee and is not happy with Trump.
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