Recently, Coca-Cola apologized for printing “You Retard” on the cap of a bottle of Vitamin Water, a premium juice/supplement product, which it did accidentally as part of a promotional initiative in which words were printed on bottle caps in both the English and French languages; “retard” means late in French.
The fallout that has ensued after the complaint of the customer, a man with an autistic daughter who took great offense to the r-word, has lead to Coke deciding to destroy and recall all Vitamin Water with the random word printing.
This is a case of a simple oversight error in editing the list of words to be printed on the bottle caps, with a significant loss of product necessary to provide the appropriate public response. The lesson learned is that such a small error can cost much more than anticipated.
However, what is also interesting to analyse the social media reaction to the incident. Online comment sections have had a great number of disparaging comments about the horrendousness of the incident, and have provided a place for the ‘haters’ to bash the inutility of Coke products, and a number of quite long and involved postings both supporting the family of the Edmonton complainant, and Coca-Cola. What Coke’s marketing team must keep in mind is that for the most part, such comments likely do not reflect the majority of reactions to the articles, which is that the mistake is simple and forgivable and the media reaction is pointless.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/09/18/coca-cola-you-retard-cap_n_3951264.html