If you happen to dabble in social media (other than stalking your exes on Facebook) you would have come across the Appletiser advert that has caused a stink the past few days. It doesn’t really matter if you think the uproar is over the top or fully justified, what is clear is that someone at Appletiser really dropped the ball on this one.

They were quick to offer an apology on their Twitter account but now their marketing executive, Andrea Shuttleworth, has elaborated on the misguided tweet from May 27 that blew up over the weekend. Here’s News24:

We’re still in a bit of shock…We just felt it was important for us to put a stake in the ground, take the higher ground and apologise and not defend it…

There was no stance on calling out blondes and brunettes. We made a mistake. We shouldn’t have called a black woman a brunette…

We realised we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. We didn’t want to defend it or explain it or rationalise about it because you just open yourself up for more debate. We’re going to move on and take the learnings.

We’re still quite a sensitive country in general around race, and we obviously overlooked that. Rather don’t raise sensitive things that will affect people. You have to take this and move forward.

I’m not sure what Appletiser’s future advertising has in store for us but you can rest assured that it won’t be anything racially sensitive.

[source:news24]