By Chris Wright
Dunkin Donuts have been forced to apologise this morning after riling Liverpool fans with a woefully misguided attempt at engaging them via an ill-thought-out social media campaign.
In their guise as the clubs’ “official tea, coffee and bakery provider”, Dunkin Donuts attempted to have a little fun by asking fans to design their own personalised version of the Liverpool club crest.
As part of the whimsy, Dunkin Donuts designed and Tweeted (now deleted) their own version of the badge, in which they replaced several iconic and symbolic elements of the logo with images of altogether more prosaic things like donuts and coffee.
For example, the Shankly Gates were replaced with ring donuts, the famous YNWA club motto became “America Runs On Dunkin” and, perhaps worst of all, the eternal Hillsborough flames were morphed into large cups of frappuccino.
As we know, Liverpool fans can be decidedly tetchy about things like this and, predictably, the whole thing backfired as legions of baffled, angry and astonished Reds supporters voiced their displeasure at seeing their hallowed badge reduced to a garish pink coffee advert.
In fact, the backlash was so bad that Dunkin Donuts felt compelled to issue a full apology via the Liverpool Echo.
“We apologise for any insensitivity regarding our tweet supporting an LFC-themed promotion featuring the LFC crest,” the statement read.
“As a proud partner of LFC, we did not intend any offence, particularly to the club’s supporters. We have removed the tweet and halted the campaign immediately.”
Dumb der-dumb dumb dumb.