#Awkward! Chipotle Fakes Twitter Hack to Promote 20th Anniversary
In the latest string of attempts by brands to grab attention on Twitter, Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular fast-food restaurant chain, faked a Twitter hack and posted “a series of confusing and seemingly random tweets over the course of an hour,” last Sunday, reports Mashable.
“We thought that people would pay attention, that it would cut through people’s attention and make them talk, and it did that,” Chris Arnold, a Chipotle representative, told Mashable in an interview. “It was definitely thought out: We didn’t want it to be harmful or hateful or controversial.”
The company launched the campaign as part of its 20th anniversary celebration, which includes “Adventurito”—a 20-day long treasure hunt featuring various puzzles. The fragmented tweets were tied into the chain’s puzzle of the day.
“We thought that it really fit well within the context of our 20th anniversary promotion where we were putting clues in all sorts of things,” Arnold said. “We had clues pop up in a lot of places and thought that incorporating something into our social media presence would fit well into that promotion.”
Chipotle told Mashable the hack promotion was successful, adding more than 4,000 followers to the Chipotle Twitter page that day with more than 12,000 retweets. Normal follow rates for the company are around 250 per day.
While there has been some amount of criticism and backlash over the stunt, the burrito and taco chain says the response has been “overwhelmingly positive”—so much so that the company is considering releasing t-shirts with one of the more popular tweets (“Please Twitter end Twitter”).
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Image: shawnblog
