A Starbucks marketing stunt spiralled into mass boycotts in South Korea

beardyw

"Marketers chose the slogan after consulting an AI tool, looking for suggestions, Shinsegae Group said. It turned out some managers who approved the campaign never opened the email attachments showing the marketing material."

hn_acker

> “While unintentional, this should never have happened. It was unintentional on the part of Starbucks at large. The CEO of Starbucks Korea intentionally chose to integrate anti-democratic references into the marketing [1]: > Did a dumb American exec misunderstand what Tank meant? Nope! Starbucks Korea is owned by a Korean billionaire who supports the old regime. > Every new tumbler is 503 ml. Random size, eh? > A right wing talking point is that "activists" are exaggerating and "only 503 people" were killed on 5/18. > The slogan for the Starbucks campaign is "Slam it on your desk!" Random, eh? > On 5/18 a young man was tortured to death in police custody. The cop said "I just slammed my hand on the desk and he died." [...] > Every Western article about this is like "is it too unwoke to make a pun on a day of remembrance?" but that's not what this is, this is a billionaire announcing to the entire country "We should not be a democracy, and I'm glad for every person who died trying to make it one. Suck it." [1] https://bsky.app/profile/ryanestrada.com/post/3mmi5yrbqps25