Kenneth Cole's Twitter Gaff

Back in February, Kenneth Cole, an American clothing designer in poor taste tweeted this, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is available online at http://bit.ly. KCAIRO   -KC”, on their Twitter account. There was immediately backlash on Twitter and on blogs because of what was going on in Cairo at the time.

Kenneth Cole responded to the backlash quickly taking down the tweet and posting this tweet to their Twitter and Facebook account, “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment.”  Kenneth Cole also posted an full out apology on their Facebook account and linked to it through their Twitter account.

Though Kenneth Cole responded quick to the trouble, the damage was already done.  People on Facebook and Twitter were calling for a boycott or refusing to ever buy the brand again.  One person on Facebook responded to the apology saying; “The satire is no less tasteless. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

One problem with Kenneth Cole’s response to the situation is that they had a general response to everything that was being said, please view our apology here.  Users didn’t like this either and felt that it was very generic.

Overnight in San Francisco, a consumer activist (or possibly a group) pranked the Kenneth Cole store front by installing a vinyl decal of the original tweet on the stores front window.

So what is my opinion of the response?  Well Kenneth Cole made a huge mistake in the fact that they were not really listening to anything anyone was saying.  It is one thing to make a serious mistake but to post a generic reply to any one that has a problem with it that is not acceptable.  Kenneth Cole should have been more sensitive all around on this one.   Regardless of their insensitivity with the original tweet, if they were to actually address the problems that people were posting and the reasons they were upset, they may have had a better turn out for people saying that everyone makes mistakes.  Unfortunately, that was not the case of all the posts on their Facebook page only two were saying this everyone else at the beginning posted about the huge mistake that was made.  After the apology was posted, people were upset about the generic reply. 

Kenneth Cole if I were grading your performance in this crisis that you created for yourself, I would give you a D and that is only because you made a minimal effort.  But the minimum is never good enough, as a popular clothing company this is something you should know.