DiGiorno Pizza Provides Another Cautionary Example Of Look Before You Tweet

Look before you tweet.

That should go without saying, especially if you are running the social media account for a brand or business, but DiGiorno Pizza is spending the day in damage control because of an extremely careless tweet last night.

DiGiorno burned itself by joining a Twitter hashtag conversation about domestic violence — #WhyIStayed — that was spiking after the release of a video showing Baltimore Ravens star Ray Rice punching his then-fiancee Janay Rice and the news that Rice had been released by the Ravens and suspended indefinitely by the NFL.

ICYMI: @DiGiornoPizza engaged with the domestic violence awareness hashtag #WhyIStayed last night. It went like this: pic.twitter.com/kIDZcAFp65

— Neetzan Zimmerman (@neetzan) September 9, 2014

The person running the DiGiorno account quickly realized his or her mistake, deleted the tweet and minutes later tweeted an apology — “A million apologies. Did not read what the hashtag was about before posting.” — but the damage was done.

Later, DiGiorno released a statement:

This tweet was a mistake, quickly realized as such and deleted seconds later.
Our community manager — and the entire DiGiorno team — is truly sorry.
The tweet does not reflect our values and we’ve been personally responding to everyone who has engaged with us on social media.
We apologize.

That this misstep came from DiGiorno is a surprise. The Nestle-owned brand is known for its snarky, but savvy and light-hearted social media efforts. DiGiorno is a regular on the newsjacking beat, with notable wins such as its live tweeting during NBC’s live broadcast of “The Sound of Music” last year and this tweet during the 2014 Super Bowl: “YO, THIS GAME IS LIKE A DIGIORNO PIZZA BECAUSE IT WAS DONE AFTER TWENTY MINUTES #SuperBowI #SuperSmack #DiGiorNOYOUDIDNT”

But social goodwill can be lost in slip of a click on the tweet button.

To its credit, the @DiGiornoPizza has been apologizing on Twitter since soon after the error, directing individual mea culpa’s to anyone criticizing it for the Tweet. By late afternoon Eastern time, the account had sent out more than 200 apologetic replies like these:

@Writes4Rights Thank you, Rebecca. I am trying to face it, and make sure people know I would never have done it purposely.

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014

@kurtgessler I’m doing my best to make sure people know their comments are being heard, and trying to make sure people know it was a mistake

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014

@MissTanya It was a horrible and careless mistake. I take full responsibility and hope people realize I would never do this on purpose.

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014

Postscript: The DiGiorno twitter account, which had only tweeted apologetic replies all day today, check in with another general statement of regret at 6:45 p.m. Eastern:

We heard from many of you, and we know we disappointed you. We understand, and we apologize to everyone for this mistake.

— DiGiorno Pizza (@DiGiornoPizza) September 9, 2014