Image courtesy of Monsters & Critics
The shade falls and the haters move fast on Black Twitter as the fallout of restaurant chain Red Lobster’s Tweet made the Beyhive swarm in response to their delayed acknowledgment of Beyonce’s risque tip of her hat to them in her NSFW “Formation” video and song lyrics.
For those unaware, Beyonce’s “Formation” has dropped and taken over the Super Bowl and the Internet with some critics saying it is a perfect anthem for “#BlackLivesMatter” as her visuals include family, her sister Solange, daughter Blue Ivy and vocals from rapper Big Frieda. It’s a layer cake of empowerment and a political statement as well, as Beyonce is sitting on a sinking New Orleans police car, and spray paint graffiti on a building is captured in the last minute of the video saying, “Stop killing us”.
The song, which was produced by Mike Will Made-It and co-written by Swae Lee of Rae Sremmurd uses New Orleans as a location as Bey sings of her Southern girl roots, Louisiana Creole and Alabama Black, while riding in an El Camino and stomping the yard in a girl drill team formation with her dancers. She even takes a big swipe at the jerks who castigated her for how Blue Ivy’s natural hair looked.
The Red Lobster reference comes in a line of lyrics:
Ya’ll haters corny with that Illuminati mess / Paparazzi catch my fly, and my cocky fresh
“I like my baby hair, with baby hair and afros. I like my negro nose with Jackson Five nostrils.
“I got hot sauce in my bag, swag.
“When he f**k me good I take his ass to Red Lobster, cause I slay.”
In about 72 hours after this song dropped, Red Lobster responded:
This was followed by this tweet after the Beyhive swarmed them hard and fast on social media:
Monsters and Critics asked award-winning marketing expert Rebecca Brooks, Partner and Co-founder at a respected Los Angeles-based market research firm, Alter Agents, about the ramifications of Red Lobster lagging in using their social media in responding to their call out in this hit song:
Brooks says, “I feel bad for Red Lobster, honestly. It wasn’t a bad tweet. They got the joke and responded appropriately for a family restaurant just called out in a raunchy song. It really speaks to the fact that Red Lobster did nothing wrong, but expectations are so high now for an immediate response, that they ended up failing with this tweet.”
Do all corporations need to take a lesson from this highly publicized event and have a 24/7 monitoring of their social media?
Brooks adds, “Brands always need to be online. As for long-term impact? Nah. People do love them biscuits. Just remember never to cross the Beyhive.”
