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Doritos Spain has severed ties with transgendered influencer Iván González Ranedo, otherwise known as, Samantha Hudson. The decision came after a social media firestorm erupted over past comments Hudson allegedly made online that culminated in the call for a Doritos Boycott
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The 24-year old singer/influencer has 360,000 followers on Instagram, and has been on the platform since she was at least 15… in 2015, the year she allegedly made inflammatory and crude comments in a handful of misguided tweets.
The controversy stemmed from a short video featuring Hudson in a 50-second spot for Doritos Spain’s “Crunch Talks” campaign. The video was quickly removed after right-wing accounts surfaced touting screenshots of past social media posts attributed to Hudson. These posts reportedly contained threatening and offensive remarks.
The screenshots of Hudson’s tweets were deleted once Hudson’s career as an influencer started to take off – Some of the comments from Hudson’s account include anecdotes such as: “I want to do depraved things, like to get into a 12-year-old girl’s a******.” And another that advocates: “for the abolition to destroy and eliminate the traditional monogamous nuclear family.”
She apologized for the comments she made on her social media account, saying: “At that time I dedicated myself to saying nonsense, the heavier the better, because I thought that ‘dark humor’ was funny.”
It was too late, the hashtag #BoycottDoritos is now trending on X started by Right-wing account, End Wokeness. The account immediately brought out the pitchforks, adding fuel to the fire. They tweeted “This is who Doritos just partnered with to be their brand ambassador in Spain. You know what to do. #BoycottDoritos. Make it trend.”
Doritos spoke out, and did not explicitly mention the influencer’s transgender identity in their statement. The company emphasized that the partnership ended due to the content of the unearthed social media posts, not Hudson’s gender identity. The released statement concerning the controversy read:
“We [Doritos Spain] recently created a content series with Samantha Hudson, a local influencer. After the campaign started, we were made aware of Samantha’s deleted Tweets from around 2015. We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments. We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”
The situations harkens back to last years controversy concerning Bud Light and their fleeting spokesperson, Dylan Mulvaney…also a transgendered influencer who faced an onslaught of vitriol simply for partnering with the Anheuser Busch brand as a transgendered person. Bud Light consumers boycotted the beer immediately led by the likes of Kid Rock who uploaded a video of himself shooting at Bud Light bottles on social media. Over a year later, the company is still trying to dig themselves out of the PR nightmare of a pit they found themselves in.
The Doritos situation is part of a larger conversation about “cancel culture” and the role of social media in brand partnerships. People are finding it harder to play by the rules when those rules are subject to change on a whim, and a cry from an audience looking for blood. These days it doesn’t take much to make it all “go away”.
