How Trolls Turned A Sainsburys Christmas Campaign Into A Race War

Ahead of the festive season Sainsburys launched three heartfelt Christmas campaigns on Twitter last week one which was titled ‘The gravy song’. The campaign featured an emotional phone conversation between a family looking forward to spending time together on Christmas.

The campaign which featured a black British family received more attention than the others and was welcomed with mixed reactions. Many viewers commended the supermarket giant for portraying a heart-warming moment which many could relate to. A lot of twitter users also felt that the campaign was a brilliant example of progression in the advertising industry. 

However, despite the flood of positive comments there were equally as many if not more negative and let’s call it for what it is - racist reactions to the tweet. 

One twitter user commented saying, ‘What is this Sainsbury’s in Africa?’.

Another wrote ‘I’m going to Aldi, they’ve kept out of the wokery up to now’.

In response to the trolls Sainsburys responded by highlighting that they ‘aim to be the most inclusive retailer’ and ‘aim to represent a modern Britain’. They then went a step further and included a clip of a white family sharing a similar experience to silence the trolls claiming that their white counterparts were not being represented.

Whilst the campaign was in many ways a success, it also raises some important social issues and raises the question of how innocent the UK is when it comes to racism.