How Kanye West was able to get Super Bowl commercial to sell his t-shirts with swastikas before site was shut down
Around an hour after posting the advert the only thing for sale on yeezy.com was a Nazi-related t-shirt
Kanye West splashed out millions on a Super Bowl commercial, and within hours of it rolling, Yeezy was selling pro-Nazi clothing.
If you watched the biggest sporting event of the year, then you may recall seeing the rapper-turned-fashion-designer appearing on your screens during the commercial break.
Once again, his ad was as cheap as they come - having done similar last year. He's seen sitting in what appears to be a dentist's chair before stuttering: "So what’s up, guys, I spent, like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Erm… erm… go to yeezy.com."
Advert
He received plaudits from the masses online, but it soon turned bitter as around an hour after it aired, there were t-shirts emblazoned with swastikas on them up for sale - that weren't on Yeezy's website at the time of the commercial.
How Yeezy sold Nazi-related t-shirts after Super Bowl ad
You might be thinking 'how did Kanye West and Yeezy get away with selling t-shirts with swastikas printed on them?'... well, as I've just mentioned, he actually didn't have the pro-Nazi t-shirts on the website at the time of the advert.
Roughly an hour later, the only thing yeezy.com was selling was a single t-shirt with a swastika on it.
Three TV stations owned by Fox, including KTTV Los Angeles, played his commercial - although there may have been more outlets playing it.
The spaces that he booked out for his advert are usually taken by local businesses of whatever network it aired on, and with the 30-second commercial not raising any red flags itself, it was free to make it to air.
However, once it made it onto the local ad rotation, that's when the controversial rapper made his move.
One insider said per Variety: "It was such a small ad, I don’t think anyone put two and two together. The copy was clean, the website was clean, and so they did their due diligence with that little part of it.”
Yeezy.com closed down
In response to the fashion designer posting a t-shirt with the symbol used by Adolf Hilter's Nazi party, yeezy.com has been closed down and is no longer accessible.
Instead, shoppers will be met with an error message which states: "This store is unavailable."
Shopify, the e-commerce platform which hosts a string of online businesses including Yeezy, shared the following statement with NBC News which explained why it was taken down: "All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform.
"This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify."
Topics: Kanye West, Super Bowl, Fashion, News
Joe Yates