Wal-Mart’s terrible 9/11 anniversary display

As another anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaches, some tone-deaf companies can’t resist using the memory to sell products.

A Wal-Mart store in Panama City Beach, Florida, was called out on social media for a tacky display that included stacks of soft drinks built to resemble the Twin Towers with a message that read: “We Will Never Forget.”

The soda was on sale for $3.33.

“Florida c’mon man,” tweeted @online_Shawn, with an image of the marketing fail.

Other angry Twitter users responded in droves, retweeting the picture over 4,000 times.

“This is one of the lamest things I’ve even seen,” @NitroRad tweeted.

Andrew Baker, under the user @andbaker, tweeted: “I am going to assume their sentiment is genuine but the manager didn’t think how tacky it is.”

And @caresaboutstuff replied with a photo of a restaurant’s sign that read, “In support and remembrance of 9/11 This location is only making pretzel sticks instead of Nuggets…” The user later clarified that the photo was from 2015, but she didn’t remember where.

Wal-Mart spokesman Charles Crowson told the Orlando Weekly that the display was being taken down. Crowson added that while Wal-Mart approves displays, it’s the companies that present the ideas.

And it’s certainly not the first time a brand has failed at “commemorating” the anniversary.

In 2014, a Birmingham-based tie company tweeted a photograph of the burning Twin Towers, asking their followers to get them 2,296 retweets — in “memory” of the 2,296 people who lost their lives that day. The same year, a Florida juice company offered 15 percent off in “honor of patriots,” and a California coffee shop also offered 15 percent off for their “Vanilla Blasts.”

In 2013, AT&T tweeted an image of a phone snapping a picture of the World Trade Center’s tribute lights. They quickly deleted and tweeted an apology. Build-A-Bear also came under fire when they tweeted — then deleted — a photo of a camouflage-patterned bear wearing an Army uniform.

Honoring the anniversary is a fine line between paying tribute to the memory and taking advantage of it. The gift shop at the 9/11 Memorial was even criticized for commercializing the tragedy, when it opened in 2014.

In 2011, Digiday published a list of companies that tweeted about the anniversary, asking readers if they considered it insensitive. The list included Chick-fil-A, Marc Jacobs, Huggies and the Dallas Cowboys. In these instances, the brands weren’t necessarily promoting their product, but still tweeted varying versions of “We honor the victims” and “Never forget.”

“My advice would be to go dark,” Marian Salzman, chief executive at EURO RSCG Worldwide public relations, told the New York Times in 2011. “There’s no place for brands to live.”

This is just as distasteful as these burning Twin Towers costumes: