Several customers of online grocery delivery app Grofers received promotional emails and texts from the company on the night of April 17 stating MOAD Missile Dropped in Bengaluru/Dellhi/Noida. It also came with an animation of a missile dropping on the ground with the text ‘Mother of All Discounts’.
This comes after the US dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS locations in Afghanistan last week, which was called ‘Mother of All Bombs’ (MOAB). This was immediately followed by reports of Russia possessing the ‘father of All bombs’ (FOAB), which is touted to be four times more powerful than the MOAB.
This attempt by Grofers to make a promotion out of this event has drawn criticism from customers all across the country. Customers took to twitter to express their distaste over an ‘insensitive’ campaign such as this. While some called it sick, many called it a cheap marketing strategy for using a weapon of mass destruction for their promotional activities.
Another customer said, “I am sure that anyone sensible who would understand the reference will not at all find it appealing, no matter how big the discounts are.”
Here are some of those tweets
Yo @Grofers - this is probably not a good idea. Just.. no. pic.twitter.com/ouaRK31q4c
— Chinmay Bhogle (@chinmaybhogle) April 17, 2017
@Grofers please don't stoop so low with your marketing campaigns.With MOAD,ur implying profit frm death & destruction which is in poor taste
— Anuj Pant (@anujpant2001) April 17, 2017
@Grofers @SushmaSwaraj @arunjaitley @KehKe @narendramodi Such a Cheap marketing strategy. Pathetic. pic.twitter.com/ZS03UElvKz
— Rithik Agarwal (@rithikagarwal) April 18, 2017
No @Grofers, it ain't remotely imaginative or funny! #fail pic.twitter.com/M7kpSPFEld
— Chittaranjan (@Chittaranjan) April 17, 2017
So @Grofers has come up with this sick #MOAD (Mother of all discounts) advertisement. Cashing in on bombing people? Annoying. #moab pic.twitter.com/0eVuIWscRU
— Raja Bagga (@rajabugs) April 17, 2017
Many even compared this goof up to that of LensKart, which sent out a promotional messages saying ‘shake it off like this earthquake’ to its customers after the 2015 Nepal earthquake that killed thousands of people.