Mera Mangle

#Throwback: The Cursed Campaign

Added 2022-12-03 17:00:08 +0000 UTC

#Throwback to June 2021: Who remembers the whole cursed taco campaign with Widow Von'Du?!?!

We were asked to be the face of a huge pride campaign for a popular Missouri taco chain called 'Mission Taco Joint'. We spent months having meeting and designing the taco (I chose sweet flavors, like Mango and Widow wanted spicy stuff, so it was sweet and spicy)

This was such a huge moment for me! I felt so honored to be the St. Louis Queen along side Widow as the Kansas City Queen. It was so validating to be seen as Widow's equal but also to represent my city!

So what went wrong?!?

Literally hours after the campaign launched, Widow Von'Du went viral (and not in a good way!) TMZ and other publications ran articles about Widow being arrested for a domestic situation involving an ex-boyfriend that weekend. Myself and the publicist who hired us for the campaign reached out to Widow to try and check-in but she never replied to any of us. In fact, I still haven't heard back from her to this very day...

Everything on social media with the Pride campaign became about Widow's situation. When working with the media team with Mission Taco, we decided it was best if I just shared photos from my solo photoshoot for the campaign instead of us as a duo, so that the focus remained on raising money for charity. This was seen by a few Queens in Kansas City as trying to "Erase" Widow from the campaign, and they chose to 'call me out' publicly. I spoke with the queen who started this and she took it down but the damage was already done. It just further made things messier and we chose to really scale back the entire Pride Campaign.

Though it was dramatic AF, I learned a lot in the entire process and still was happy I got the opportunity! Hopefully the next big ad campaign will run smoother, but if not, I definitely know how to handle it better!