Popular tech Youtuber Marques Brownlee, known for his channel MKBHD, recently paused his partnership with phone case/skin company dbrand after a social media exchange.
dBrand has a history of being funny on X, but they took it a little far this time.
The situation began when a customer posted about an issue with a dbrand product. dbrand responded with a now-deleted tweet deemed offensive by a lot of users on X. This is a part of dBrand’s online social media presence. While the company has a history of using humor on social media, this instance crossed a line. Below is a screenshot of the original tweet.
Now MKBHD and dbrand are in the eyes of a lot of tech enthusaists. They both have a total of 8.5 million followers between them. A public scenario such as this always gets attention, and that’s exactly what happened. People started leaving harsh comments towards dbrand, many of them saying that they will never support dbrand again because of that insensitive comment. For instance, a user said, and we quote, “Poking fun at customers and being racist are two completely different things. Seems like the going price of being racist is $10,000”. Another user wrote, “Still very toxic of you to act this way in the first place. Hard to earn respect, easy to lose it.” You might be thinking – is it that big of a deal? Read on to judge for yourself.
Now what exactly happened was, the tweet (in the image above) also represented dbrand in bad taste because the victim account was an Indian guy. You can see how their joke comes across in a big online space, that is X.
The company doesn’t even refrain from using cusses and insults towards even their most loyal customers, so it’s easy to see why the victim got caught in the line of fire.
Facing public backlash, dbrand issued a two-part response. Initially, they apologized directly to the customer and offered a sizable amount of money, but ultimately, defended their overall social media strategy. Marques clearly saw this tweet and wasn’t exactly impressed. He wrote a couple of detailed paragraphs where he straight up announced that he would stop working with dbrand because of this whole fiasco. He also talked about the harm caused by the original tweet and called for a more sincere apology reflecting on their actions. These are the tweets that dbrand and MKBHD posted, and its clear that it this point, everyone was taking it seriously.
dbrand responded positively, acknowledging the seriousness of the situation and agreeing to remove the offensive tweet. MKBHD responded shortly, commending the company’s willingness to learn and adapt, indicating a restored working relationship. It’s interesting to note that MKBHD is probably dbrand’s biggest source of customers, so if this went a different route, the company’s revenue would’ve definitely taken a hit, no doubt.
Also, props to Marques for taking a stand almost immediately after this happened. It doesn’t matter if it came from a place of a moral standpoint or he simply wanted to keep a squeaky clean PR on his YouTube brand – the company that started this ordeal was held accountable by a big influencer. The consequences were quick, and the recovery was quicker. Hopefully dbrand doesn’t give up its humor, but moderates it in the future.
This incident is a reminder of how important public images are these days. Since consequences of actions on social media have escalated, companies can’t tread as lightly. While humor can be a marketing tool, companies must be aware of potential rebuttals and be prepared to adapt.
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(Via)
