Kenneth Cole's #Cairo Tweet in Bad Taste, But Still Successful

Yesterday, Kenneth Cole Productions, Inc., a New York fashion house, released a tweet:

Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC

Though this tweet has subsequently been deleted (originally at http://twitter.com/#!/KennethCole/statuses/33177584262971393), others took screen captures of it: http://yfrog.com/h5348jkhtj.

The uproar on Twitter and Facebook was considerable. I won't talk about what a bad idea this was to use hash tag spam in such bad taste. Plenty of others have. And I won't get into whether using bad taste can result in more coverage than one could ever expect by playing it safe.

What I will draw your attention to is the link used in the tweet. The great thing about bit.ly is the stats for a link are available to anyone. So I invite you look at  http://bit.ly/KCairo+.

As I write this, late Thursday night, there's been nearly 15,000 clicks on the link. So I guess despite the uproar, this tweet accomplished its message of getting people to look their new spring collection.

I guess this brings up the question: intentional bad taste or accidental success?