When it comes to corporate decision-making, there's a thing companies used to do called "due diligence." This meant, broadly speaking, that companies would look into the data before making a decision; this included such things as looking into the accounting of a company they were thinking of acquiring, looking into the compliance profile of vendors, and — this is a big one — looking into the backgrounds of people a company was thinking of hiring as a trade representative, or as they seem to be called these days, "brand ambassadors."
Frito-Lay's Doritos brand, in Spain, suffered a catastrophic failure of due diligence when they hired "Samantha Hudson" to be a "transgender brand ambassador."
Doritos has fired a transgender activist who appeared in one of its promotional videos after being alerted to her sickening old tweets, including one where she wrote about doing 'depraved things' to a 12-year-old.
Samantha Hudson, 24, appeared in a new partnership with Doritos Spain through a 50-second video called 'Crunch Talks that has now been deleted from the brand's Instagram.
Doritos told Rolling Stone on Tuesday it would no longer work with Hudson, saying it had been unaware of her previous inappropriate posts.
Remember that bit about "due diligence?" It seems hiring officials and marketing folks only look into a candidate's social media background if they are suspected of being a conservative or a libertarian, or something icky like that — because they sure missed a lot of big tells in "Samantha Hudson's" history.
Born Iván González Ranedo, Hudson has identified herself as 'anti-capitalist' and 'Marxist' in interviews, and claimed in one video to be for 'the abolition of [and to] destroy and annihilate the traditional monogamous nuclear family.' As a teen, she has also tweeted about wanting to do 'depraved things' to a minor.
Many social media users posted a screenshot of a tweet Hudson made in 2015, when she was 15, writing in Spanish about the seeming assault of a minor.
The post in question read: 'I want to do thuggish things to get into a 12-year-old girl's [expletive].'
Another post translates to: 'In the middle of the street in Mallorca in panties and screaming that I'm a nymphomaniac in front of a super beautiful 8-year-old girl.'
In another post, Hudson wrote: 'I hate women who are victims of sexual assault and go to self help centers to overcome their trauma. Annoying sl**s.'
Let those soak in for a moment. This is a person who, candidly, should probably not be walking around unsupervised. "Samantha Hudson" has expressed pedophilic intent openly, in virtual public, along with a horrific expression of contempt for sexual assault survivors, and as many have learned, to their regret, the internet is forever. Granted, there's no crime (as far as I know — I'm not well-informed on the state of free speech in Spain) in making Twitter comments without acting on them — but there's no sense in hiring a person who made this part of their public profile.
You would think the world's marketing and advertising people would learn, at some point, the risks they are taking in engaging people like this. Remember Dylan Mulvaney? Remember thinking that was a bad decision (it was) on the part of the Bud Light people, using a cross-dressing, failed Audrey Hepburn look-alike to sell beer that had been a longstanding BroDude staple?
This decision by Doritos Spain is orders of magnitude worse.
See Related: Federal Judge Rules Biden Administration Can't Force Christian Employers to Pay for Trans Surgeries
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What is really baffling about all this is that the company feels the need to hire a "brand ambassador" at all. It's no secret that I'm rather disgusted by the whole idea of "influencers," especially since most of these people shouldn't be influential to anyone with enough brains to pound sand. But this case is a real head-scratcher; I mean, go to the article linked here and look at the photos that this... person posed for. That, alone, should have been enough to make Doritos Spain avoid eye contact and back slowly away.
In what sane world — or even in Spain — is this person an acceptable representative for a product intended to be marketed to the mainstream? And what's wrong with tailoring your advertising and marketing efforts on the product itself — like, how crunchy and delicious it is? I've been known to grab a bag of Doritos myself on occasion because, sometimes, you just need a flavor that doesn't exist in nature. I may re-think that now; there are some great corn chip brands outside of the Frito-Lay universe, after all.
The Doritos people really screwed the pooch on this one. They should have stuck with Avery Schrieber.
