American Airlines and United can take a back seat as Delta has taken the wheel as they’ve some how managed to piss off parts of the internet with their Coca-Cola napkins.
As part of a new promotion, Delta and Coca-Cola teamed up by serving drinks with napkins with the following text printed on them: “Because you’re on a plane with interesting people and hey … you never know.”
On the back, there are underlined spaces to write your name and number in, so that you can give it to your airplane crush at the end or during the flight.
To the side of those spaces are some “instructions”. It says, “be a little old school. Write down your number & give it to your plane crush. You never know…”
The campaign did not exact go as planned, with many voicing their opinion about the situation, generally describing the napkins as “creepy”.
https://twitter.com/ducksauz/status/1087424701838684162
https://twitter.com/MJJoe/status/1091133757313171456
Both Delta and Coca-Cola have issued apologies to the media, saying that the napkins will be removed from their flights due to the negative publicity being attracted. “We rotate Coke products regularly as part of our brand partnership, but missed the mark with this one”, said a Delta representative while Coca-Cola said, “we sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended. We worked with our partners at Delta to begin removing the napkins last month and are replacing them with other designs.”
Admittedly, there were a few negative comments about the “suggestive” napkin, but as news about the airline’s decision to pull the napkins spread across the web, the majority of social media comments swayed in favour of the campaign. Many even questioned the negative comments, asking why the napkins were considered creepy but dating apps like Tinder were not. Some even went as far as saying that Coke’s campaign worked wonders by driving discussions online, bringing more attention to the two brands.
Of course there were the few who also took the opportunity to crack a good joke out of the situation.
Did you think the napkin campaign was offensive?
[Featured Photo: ducksauz/Twitter]
