A British coffee chain has been forced to apologise and pull a social media campaign after its tagline was revealed as a slang term for female masturbation.
In another one of those examples of “how the hell did this get approved in the first place?”, coffee chain Costa Coffee has pulled the campaign after it was busted using the slogan “flick the bean” to “fuel wild nights out”.
The concept of the campaign was that Costa customers went online and flicked a coffee bean into a cup to win free food items in-store.
However, it’s still not clear if the blunder was a case of cheeky copyrighting or plain naivety on the behalf of Costa’s marketing team.
The campaign first appeared on the Facebook page of its outlet at Dunmail Park in the country’s north-west; an area that apparently attracts a lot of students.
The now deleted post read: “FRESHERS! Fuel your early morning lectures OR the start of your wild nights out with a discounted or even a FREE Costa treat!
“Get lucky when you flick the coffee bean into one of the Costa cups to reveal a surprise deal. Play ‘FLICK THE BEAN’ here!”
It also ran on the social media pages of other Costa stores but was also quickly deleted.
A spokesperson for the family-friendly coffee chain tried to explain the bizarre marketing stunt.
“This competition was run by one of our franchise partners in a small number of stores and was not approved by Costa Coffee,” the spokesperson revealed.
“We apologise for any offence caused and have requested the immediate removal of the competition.”
