Popular American financial services firm, Mastercard has aborted its plan to donate the equivalent of 10,000 meals to poor children in Latin American and the Caribbean every time Lionel Messi or Neymar score at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
The company aborted the plan after severe social media backlash.
The company had tweeted:
Goals that changes lives: for each goal scored by Messi or Neymar Jr. Mastercard will donate the equivalent of 10,000 meals to @WFP to fight childhood hunger and malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean #TogetherWeAre10 #StartSomethingPriceless https://t.co/URfIp77ElN pic.twitter.com/Ckq61oJgld
— Noticias Mastercard (@MastercardLAC) May 31, 2018
But many social media commentators at taken offence at the announcement, describing it as “worst PR own goal ever”, “disgusting” and the like.
Worst PR own goal ever. If you’ve got the money…. just buy the f***ing food. How sad that the fate of a starving child rests in the foot of a multi million pound player.
— Justin Lockwood (@Lockers75) June 1, 2018
What a load of corporate bollocks as a response @Mastercard – This is a dreadful campaign. If this happened at my agency I’d have fired the fucking lot of them
— 🎙Jon Morter (@JonMorter) June 3, 2018
https://twitter.com/AshMedley/status/1002850437517709312