From Kenneth Cole’s Twitter account during the violent uprising in Egypt:
“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at (link).” (Source)
Um, no.
Thanks for showing every brand on the planet exactly what not to do on Twitter, and for proving my point about the need to hire actual professionals to manage social media functions. But hey, fancy “KCairo” short url at the end of the tweet.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Egypt so far is over 300, with thousands wounded. Way to jump on a trending #hashtag to push your products, Kenneth Cole.
Poorly done.
Updates:
From CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/id/41410463
Kenneth Cole apologizes… and faces the public’s wrath: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=9291921501&topic=16039
Kenneth Cole gets punked with a decal: http://mashable.com/2011/02/04/kenneth-cole-prank/
Additional Reading:
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/7122-kenneth-cole-in-revolutionary-hashtag-hijacking-fail
http://mshahab.posterous.com/hashtag-hacking-the-kenneth-cole-fail
A final word:
And now that Kenneth Cole has apologized and taken a beating on Twitter, Facebook and everywhere in between, it’s time to move on. Screw-ups like this happen from time to time, and lessons from them are usually well learned. No need to bludgeon Kenneth Cole to death over this. Everyone there got the message loud and clear. Everyone can ease up now. Let the guy dust himself off and carry on. 😉
Cheers.
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Did the chihuahuas post this? Dang that’s fast – more evidence of your own rainbow/unicorn superpowers. And spot on for your assessment, too. – thanks
Sometimes, I am actually at my desk when these things happen.
Regards,
Chico
Not sure who comes off worse – Kenneth Cole, or the fashion victims who jump over to his website from this tweetertwaddle.
I wonder if they’ll have a sale to try and regain some semblance of popularity. That would be good. I need a new belt.
Wow. Just… wow.
Love to meet the genius who calls himself a Social Media guru who is behind this idea. What did you say his name was? Ah yes Jack Scrib- nice one dude
I’m dumbfounded that any brand could be so clueless.
We’re not talking about a company simply not knowing social media best practices. Posting a message that makes light of such a serious situation is just morally corrupt.
And you’re right, if they don’t have a social media manager, they need one. The cost of which would have been much less than the sales they’ll lose from bad PR.
Reminds me of when desktop computers became popular. Everyone who bought one suddenly thought they could design.
Every company that assigns SM accounts to interns should really look at this as a wake up call.
RFD = Recipe for Disaster…..talked about this over the summer!
Man, you’re fast! The massive stupidity of this post took my breath away. What’s really pathetic is that there actually was a great way for Kenneth Cole (or any company) to become an active participant in these events in a sensitive way. For instance:
“For every RT of this message, we’ll donate 10 cents to an Egyptian emergency relief fund.”
Which, come to think of it, they’ll probably have to make a significant contribution to such a fund to dig themselves out of the PR hole they’ve dug.
Yep. How about a whole dollar, even? 😉
All I can say is.. WOW!
But the usage of the initials suggests that there was approval from Kenneth Cole himself. Unbelievable.
According to the profile, that’s right.
Only took 3 1/2 hours for someone to brand jack Kenneth Cole with a bogus Twitter account @KennethColePR — tweeting the likes of “People of Haiti, fall into our store for earth-shattering savings! #KennethColeTweets
Will be interesting to see how the company handles this.
Wow. We will see that one making the rounds of he what-not-to-do presentations and posts for a while. Truly unbelievable.
Every time I see something like this, I think, Thank God, job security. I am curious which of their now dismissed interns ( I pray they at lease realized this was wrong) made this tweet thinking it was a good idea, just want to make sure we avoid hiring them:)
Oh. My God. With mouth agape, I can’t think what to type. Is that tweet really from the brand itself? That seems like spam. Bumfuzzled.
Oh yeah. It’s real.
Have you seen the new @KennethColePR account? Someone just started it in honor of the real thing.
Since that tweet, Kenneth Cole apologized: “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.” -KC (Cole explains in his Twitter bio: “Thoughts that end in -KC are from me personally.”)
It was in bad taste, yet in keeping with the spirit of the brand, which is quite provocative. The tweet should have been written in support of the people of Egypt and tied to the brand.
Carol, I have heard that “spirit of the brand” argument several times already. Respectfully, I don’t buy it. Here’s why:
I have been buying Kenneth Cole products for well over a decade now. I currently own two pairs of KC shoes, pants, belts, shirts, scarves, and my favorite wind jacket is by Kenneth Cole. (I wear that thing every day. It’s almost sad.) The Kenneth Cole brand is a look and a feel. KC occupies a very specific place in the fashion brand pantheon. It’s kind of a Tom Ford for the masses: Tailored, modern and elegant without being pretentious. The Kenneth Cole brand is not about controversy. It’s about looking good, put together and professional without being loud.
When I walk into a store and see the Kenneth Cole section, what I see are quality clothes, with a traditionally safe black, gray and white palette. What I don’t see is controversy. I don’t even think “controversy.” In fact, when I look at their clothes, I think “safe.” Safe for the office, safe for a first date or a night on the town, safe for a wedding, a funeral, an engagement party or business travel.
The spirit of the brand is not “provocative” at all. Never has been. And, given Kenneth Cole’s universal appeal, one can only infer from the massive outrage over this twitter incident that most people found KC’s promotional tweet completely off-brand.
Thanks for the comment. 🙂
“The Kenneth Cole brand is not about controversy.” AND “The spirit of the brand is not ‘provocative’ at all. Never has been.”
I dunno, Olivier. I think I have to disagree with you here.
Kenneth Cole has been running provocative, edgy, controversial ads for a long, long time. You can see many of them on the KC website:
http://frisk.in/f1kKXi
Check out the creative in the “What If” campaign, in support of AMFAR, from 1996, 15 years ago:
— If your kids had AIDS…You’d have more to worry about than clean socks.
— If your dad had AIDS…He’d need more from you than a necktie in June.
— If the president had AIDS…He’d need more than your vote.
— If the Pope had AIDS…He’d need more than your prayers. (That one never ran, because no publisher would touch it.)
Or this one from 1992, featuring a goofy picture of Dan Quayle with the headline: “Don’t forget to Vot.”
Or the ad from way back in 1987 with a picture of a condom wrapper, with the headline: “Our shoes aren’t the only things we encourage you to wear.”
Or this one from 1987, featuring the handwritten text: “We think women should have a choice when it comes to being pregnant. Barefoot is another story.”
The Egypt tweet was ridiculously ill-conceived and tone-deaf. Off-the-charts dumb. All the criticism is richly deserved.
But the record is pretty clear that KC has been doing “provocative” for almost 25 years.
And this isn’t the first time they’ve really stepped in it, either. There was a Nelson Mandela ad that lots of folks found outrageous. Of course, in the social media age, the outrage can reach epic proportions with lightening rapidity.
I hear you, but those AIDS ads presented a completely different context, Mark.
They weren’t saying “I wonder if people with #AIDS are upset about being dead before we release our 1998 spring collection. http://www.bit.ly/…/CKaids” Know what I mean? Flirting with a controversial subject isn’t the same as making light of it at the expense of people’s suffering.
The wording, the intent, the context, are all radically different. One uses controversy as a platform to raise awareness for a problem within the context of the brand. The other exploits a tragedy to attract traffic to a website with an offensive degree of insensitivity.
Something to keep in mind: Bold advertising pushes the boundaries of comfort. It doesn’t crash through them with the tact and finesse of a drunk driver behind the wheel of an 18-wheeler. There is a reason why so many people were outraged by this particular tweet. It wasn’t like the stuff KC has done in the past. It crossed the line. Several lines, in fact.
And as an aside, what the KC brand may have been 25 years ago is not what it is today. 😉
Cheers, Mark.
Seeing that Tweet blew my mind. At first I was like, oh man SOMEONE got fired… and then I found out it was from Kenneth Cole himself and my mind was blown again. I now have a headache.
It still isn’t 100% clear that it was KC himself. Oftentimes, accounts like this are managed by proxies.
This goes well beyond bad taste. It’s one thing to be edgy and quite another to go over the edge with such stunning lack of sensitivity. KC needs to do damage repair with some sort of (well-thought) outreach effort to the people of Egypt.
It might not hurt, yes.
Also, to associate the launch of a new spring line with violent riots would imply that the line is awful. That’s just bad advertising. Sometimes (most times?) CEOs shouldn’t tweet.
LMAO!!!!!! Love the negative connotation angle in this situation. 😀
I can see the ad campaign already.
Your chihuahua could probably be doing a better job doing social media marketing than whoever Kenneth Cole hired.
Didn’t people learn from the Habitat UK hashtag spam?
I will never buy Kenneth Cole again! How’s that for “Viral Marketing”?!?
It’s impressive how the more a company thinks internally that it has social media “covered,” the more likely it is that it in fact doesn’t.
This certainly wasn’t Kenneth Cole’s finest moment.
Kenneth Cole apologized: “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.” -KC
This is not an apology. Typically, an apology will include the word “sorry”. (some remorse v. some spin … )
Good point.
You mean that’s not acceptable?
Ah, another fine example for my class. I still have the in-depth story of a public relations professional who tried to capitalize on something tragic, but this will help keep the concept line fresh.
Thank you!
Rich
You have two elements to this tweet that, combined, made it bad enough to cause that level of outrage:
1. Making light of a pretty serious and tragic situation.
2. Hijacking a news hashtag to boost traffic to a website.
One or the other would have been bad form. But both of them combined: Disaster.
Put that to your class and see what they have to say about it. 😉
This begs the question of how people get into these types of positions in the first place. I don’t consider myself a SM expert and even I wouldn’t do that. Do you have to be an expert to have simple tact?
Yes. “Don’t be an asshole” should be a prerequisite for most consumer-facing functions. Agreed.
Good lord!
Absolutely unbelievable. I’ve always had tremendous respect for this brand. It’s almost as though their Twitter account was sabotaged (I’m sure they wish that were the case at this point), as it seems so out of character. Mind boggling.
Holy SH**##*
That’s unbelievable. We covered some Twitter don’ts on our blog recently, but nothing that extreme. Wow.
Yep. There might be a faux-pas gold medal in it for them this year.
They have deleted the tweet and posted an apology.
The deletion was bad. The initial apology wasn’t much of one. But yeah: They screwed up. They acknowledged that they screwed up. No need to beat a dead horse.
Beyond the pale. Gauche. Insensitive. Just plain stupid.
FWIW, it’s also a clue as to the leadership of the brand. KC doesn’t have the confidence to surround himself with at least one person with a spine? Are they all “yes men” who rubber stamp and nod when something moronic comes out of the boss’s mouth?
Massive fail from many perspectives.
This sort of thing always reveals some dysfunctions within the org, yes. Outbound comms are like the part of the iceberg that floats on the surface in that way.
Typical instance of someone trying to be too smart for their own good.
That rarely ends well, does it. 😀
Hard to believe someone supposedly savvy can be this socially tone-deaf.
Please tell me what you think about the video in my “website.”
Also, this is probably the worst case of inappropriate advertising I’ve ever seen.
I appreciate your final word, Olivier. We’re often so eager to lynch someone on blogs and Twitter when they screw up, yet we’re not as diligent about laying off when they acknowledge a mistake.
Thanks for encouraging diplomacy and maturity.
Thanks, Scott. I don’t hear that said to me very often. 😀
Wow. It’s hard to imagine someone thinking that was a good idea. Trust me, I do plenty of things in poor taste – and even I cringed. That being said, there are plenty of things that seem like a great idea at the time that simply look horrible when you let them fly… can’t take that one back…whoops!
Though it seemed like a good idea at the time, in hindsight, I would have never dated Jenny Shmolinsky.
Yep. You’re right.
no such thing as bad publicity , when will you social media fools learn that ? The average geeza can protest about BP all day, then stop by a petrol station to fill up their gas without giving a shite where it came from.
I’ve never heard of Kenneth Cole, but now I do and apparently its top end. I won’t give a shite about a tweet tbh. Also can you imagine the amount of back links their website has gotten this week ? It will take thousands of dollars worth to get those awesome PR 8/9 links from large publishers such as CBS etc.
Peaze
Dave da spade
No such thing as bad publicity? 😀 Keep believing that, David. Website back-links don’t pay the bills for retailers. Cash register receipts do.
Wait… You’ve never heard of Kenneth Cole? Really?
my god!
wow
This is a perfect example of how brands don’t quite understand the intensity and massive distribution powers that social media has. Social media allows corporations to have their finger on the pulse of their consumer’s needs, and through this bad tweet Kenneth Cole has received an unintended, undesired reaction from their consumers of what they need and want from them as a brand. Even more, after KC deleted the original tweet and then offered an “apology” they thought they would be in the clear and everyone could move on from it. However, just because you deleted it doesn’t mean it’s not still floating around in the digital world. Days later someone created a window graphic sticker of the original tweet and stuck it on the Kenneth Cole front window in San Francisco. Woops, back in the media for all the wrong reasons again.
Olivier, thank you very much for posting a link to my post. This has been an interesting study in social media awareness and use, hasn’t it? Although, having said that, it’s a study for those of us who care, but I’m not sure it was much of a study for Kenneth Cole.
He sure got a lot of publicity — but not the kind that he wanted. At any rate, he did apologize and that counts for something. That was one tough lesson to learn.