Beyoncé is Pregnant! Let’s Promote Our Brand?

Unless you don’t have social media or don’t have celebrity-obsessed friends, you probably know that Beyoncé is pregnant! With twins!! This is probably the most excited the world, or at least the U.S. has been over a celebrity pregnancy, because, well, it’s Beyoncé.
I’m all for congratulating her on social media, which is what her fans and celebrities alike did all last week. The world couldn’t get over this good news during a time that for many has been a bit dark. But then I stumbled across this article from PR Week, “Queen Bey is pregnant with twins! 5 brands react.” I clicked it, and it was weird.
It’s not that any of the tweets were really inappropriate, it was just weird, I don’t know how else to describe it. Like Hostess Snacks posted a fake sonogram photo with a pack of Twinkies as the baby. Popeyes tweeted that she had two biscuits in the oven and they could have free Popeyes for life. Like I said, the tweets aren’t inappropriate, but they’re just strange.
Several months ago, Rachel wrote a blog about brands jumping on the Pokémon Go bandwagon to promote their brand. And about a year ago she wrote a similar post about brands promoting their product through Star Wars. The takeaway is that most of the time carelessly jumping on the bandwagon doesn’t benefit a brand’s PR. I think this instance is the weirdest to be promoting your brand though because it’s a person’s pregnancy…while the tweets themselves aren’t inherently inappropriate, I do think it’s inappropriate to promote your brand for personal benefit from someone’s pregnancy.
If a brand is going to comment on Beyoncé’s pregnancy, take a page out of Spotify’s book—congratulate her and move on.
What do you think?