The Montreal man arrested in Berlin for the murder and dismemberment of his ‎victim had a Facebook photograph showing him holding a bottle of Labatt Blue quite ‎prominently. The picture was published in the Montreal Gazette.

Labatt requested the Gazette remove the photo. The Gazette refused.  Labatt sent ‎a strongly worded letter suggesting it would pursue “legal avenues, if required” to ‎get the Gazette to comply.  The media picked up the story.

Twitter picked up the story.  It went viral.  It spawned a whole new twitter hashtag ‎‎#newlabattcampaign, filled with, mostly, tasteless jokes.  Virtually all of which poke ‎at Labatt.  The consensus in the twitter-verse is that Labatt’s over-reacted and over-‎reached.

The net result of the twitter-storm? Many more people, and many more ‎newspapers have reported on the unfortunate photo making it a much more ‎prominent news story.  Whatever damage Labatt feared, has had the opportunity ‎to be multiplied many times over.

The murder, Luka Magnotta, has been shown in many photos with many other ‎branded items. None of them have raised the profile of those photos.

Labatt has since rescinded its request to the Gazette to remove the picture.