Kenneth Cole the famous shoe manufacturer and retailer, had nothing better to do it would seem, so he decided to issue a provocative Twitter tweet, drawing in the Cairo, Egypt protests, to help move his product. This one:
Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo-KC.
And while that URL now leads to a page that doesn't exist, and Kenneth Cole deleted the tweet, the "damage" was done, and to Cole.
Or was it?
Kenneth Cole issued this apology on Facebook:
I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I’ve dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate.
Kenneth Cole, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer
But that didn't stop others from unloading on him on the same page:
Cristian Reatti
You are an asshole! No excuses
on Thursday · Report
Alex Fellas Khater
insensitive
on Thursday · Report
Daniel Machock
bastar-d
on Thursday · Report
Bruce Willke Sr.
I still cant get over how you could even think of making jokes about Egypt/Cairo when people are dying in the streets.
on Thursday · Report
And that's why Kenneth Cole didn't make a mistake. I think he knew his action wasn't going to be well-received, but went ahead and did it because he knows it's a common action today.
In other words a marketer will take an action that's less than kosher to get attention, which satisfies the first level of reach, then apologize for that action, which draws more attention, and then ride off the talk that's generated from the entire episode.
That's what Kenneth Cole's going through. Overall, he's still got a good name and the Internet flamers who jump on him will, in some cases, make themselves look so bad it actually helps Cole.
Meanwhile, Cole was just doing the kind of "hashtag piggybacking" (a term I created) that's common on Twitter.
Hashtag Piggybacking is where a person uses a Twitter hashtag intended to bring attention to one thing as a tool to bring attention to something of their own design. Here's an example using two hashtags that are top Twitter Trend Topics as of this writing: #scariestwordsever and #statefarmwasntthere.
Now the idea is for you to take the hashtag and add some snappy words to it to cause a cool new tweet. But what I did was use it to bring attention to my video-blog on Kenneth Cole's actions.
#scariestwordsever Zennie62 is talking about you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNHG8Hi4Ypw because #statefarmwasntthere
See?
It's a sure thing Cole, or one of his associates, noticed this and decided to try it around the Egypt situation, perhaps thinking there would be a negative backlash but nothing that would really hurt his brand. So, he did it.
What followed was a lot of buzz for his brand and for a certain SOMA store, and 400 new Twitter followers in one day. The angry Internet people? That will pass. Cole's not going to do that again, and he knows it.
Not bad.