The UK arm of international sports brand Adidas turned its twitter account over to an autoresponder that generated soccer kit images based on anything twittered at it, inviting senders “to the squad”. The resulting soup of bigotry and warmly-welcomed Nazis could be predicted by almost anyone alive in 2019, but no-one at Adidas or “Guud Campaigns” has the slightest clue about how the internet works, so here we are.
the promotional campaign was hijacked by people with offensive or insensitive Twitter handles, including @GasAllJewss, @MadelineMcCann, and @96wasnotenough.
The images of the offensive handles on Arsenal shirts were retweeted widely.
The offensive tweets were posted from the @AdidasUK account late on Monday night and were still visible on Twitter through the early hours of the morning, but have since been removed.
In a statement, Adidas says its ‘Twitter Team’ is ‘investigating’. Good luck figuring it out, Adidas Twitter Team!