I’ve heard of making jokes in light of tragedy, but Kenneth Cole may have taken that a little more than overboard. Last week Kenneth Cole tweeted what he thought would be funny involving the situation in Egypt. He tweeted “ Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo- KC”. The initials at the end imply the post was approved by Kenneth Cole before it went public.
As according to Huffington Post, Kenneth Cole immediately removed the post and created a new one apologizing for his actions. His second post said “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment-KC”. Even though Kenneth Cole immediately apologized, the Public Relations damage had already been done.
As if this wasn’t enough damage angry viewers continued to add to the publicity nightmare. Viewers were furious about the “Hijacking” of the Cairo hashtag that was intended only for tracking the latest news in Egypt. Many viewers thought it would be comical to create fake Kenneth Cole PR twitter accounts with posts such as “People from New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth Cole Stores!” and “Our new looks are dropping faster than the World Trade Center”.
Kenneth Cole’s purpose may not have been to create such a whirlwind of bad decisions, but it certainly doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the problems with a satirical tweet on such a sensitive situation. Hopefully this string of events will lead Kenneth Cole to think twice before posting another one of these publicity mayhem tweets.
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