Holiday

By John Kultgen and Andrew Minucci

Social media users are getting increasingly intolerant of brands stepping into terrains that aren’t relevant to their business. In traditional advertising, brands can fly under the radar when utilizing cultural holidays, but social media offers the consumer a quick, visible and viral way to create a backlash.

Some brands don’t do anything at all. For instance, Pepsi, Southwest Airlines, and Samsung Mobile are just a few big brands that decided to stay silent on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2016.

But if you do choose to speak up, how does your brand mention a cultural holiday without ending up on one of those “social media fails” lists?