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Social Media and Negotiating Celebrity Endorser Morals Clauses

By Doug Wood

By now, you'd have to be living in Antarctica not to have read about insurance giant AFLAC firing Gilbert Gottfried, the voice of the AFLAC duck, over insensitive jokes he made on Twitter following the Tsunami in Japan and its aftermath. The comedian simply went too far for the company's taste and off to pasture went Gottfried and his quack. But did everyone also notice in the last year how Gottfried was not alone in his insensitivity, and more so how it's not just the celebrities who are hired by companies but also the executives who hire them that are guilty of Tweetocide?

In Australia, Stephanie Rice, Olympic Gold Medal swimmer turned spokesperson for Jaguar, tweeted a decidedly homophobic comment after her team beat South Africa in a swimming tournament. While she later gave an apology for what she tweeted, it was too late and she was summarily dismissed as a Jaguar spokesperson. She learned the lesson that what you may say in private or believe in your own mind does not belong on Twitter (or anywhere else for that matter).

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