Music legend and style icon Prince Rogers Nelson — popularly known as "Prince"— died on Thursday at the age of 57. The news first hit through TMZ, and was quickly confirmed by The Associated Press as well.
It wasn't long after that confirmation that the first tweets from brands started to show up. These aren't the simple "#RIP Prince" kind of stuff you'd expect to see from fans, but a way for a company to promote itself in the face of a someone's death.
Like this one, since deleted, from General Mills-owned Cheerios:
That the company deleted the tweet says that they are aware of how deeply off it was, and other companies did the same. Others had a more muted response.
Like Cheerios, whoever manages the Hamburger Helper Twitter account deleted this message:
And then a bunch of other brands changed their logos, like this one from 3M which is literally just the company's logo with a tear shape cut out:
And this one from TV Guide.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider