Life is like a Bowl of Skittles.

This election has had its fair share of twitter drama. Which is why this week when another attention raising tweet was sent out by one of the candidates I wasn’t too surprised, but found myself more focused on the brand that was dragged into it. Candidate Donald Trump tweeted an analogy drawing a comparison between a bowl of Skittles and refugees.  This sparked two different thoughts in my mind, one when I saw the original tweet and one when I saw the Skittles brand response.

The original tweet made me wonder how brands handle these situations and whether or not they should have to be accountable for them. After sending his tweet, Donald Trump drew a line of association between him and Skittles in the media, something Skittles brand never set out to do. The brand never came together and decided to sponsor or support the candidate, but now their names have become buzz words together for the week. There’s really no way for the brand to prevent this, they cannot (nor would they want to) forbid people from speaking about their brand. But now they are forced to make some type of response, or face the wrath of not acknowledging it at all.

My second thought came when I saw Skittles response:

"Skittles are candy. Refugees are people. We don't feel it's an appropriate analogy. We will respectfully refrain from further commentary as anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing." – Denise Young, vp of corporate affairs Wrigley Americas

The part of this that stood out to me was the last line “…anything we say could be misinterpreted as marketing”. This is an issue I was first introduced to when interning for a well-known, international brand this summer. In the heat of the Black Live Matter movement, I was able to sit in on a companywide town hall hosted to discuss how the employees felt the company was handling the movement. It was in this meeting I recognized that large brands taking stances on these controversial instances goes well beyond just determining what side they should take. This company was in the middle of determining not only the best stance to take on the matter, but more importantly how to go about presenting that stance. They had several focus groups testing out responses to commercials, print ads, social media posts, etc. all of which came back with some negative thoughts. There is an incredibly thin line for large brands between taking a stance, and making money off tragedy. The last thing this brand wants is to be creating “advertisements” when they are just trying to share their thoughts on an issue. This is a huge issue often missed by outside consumers, they are often quick to bash brands for not taking a stance sooner when often these brands are battling an internal moral issue.