Chipotle Mexican Grill fakes hacking as part of publicity stunt

It was hard not to feel sorry for the communications department at Jeep in the beginning of the year, when the car brand’s Twitter account got hacked and stated the company was being sold to Cadillac because of heavy drug use in the office. 

And who couldn’t emphasize with Burger King after their Twitter account got hacked just days before and led to its administration to publicly state, “We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics.”? 

With incidences of verified Twitter accounts being a target for hackers it was no surprise when Chipotle Mexican Grill’s verified Twitter account started spewing nonsensical tweets on July 21st, 2013. 

The messages weren’t as graphic and vulgar as the Burger King and Jeep’s incidents, with one being, “Hi sweetie, can you pick up some lime, salt, and onions? Twitter,” and another reading “Find avocado store in Arvada, Colorado.” These were broadcasted to 200,000 followers over the course of an hour, all of whom likely thought it was just the regular work of a frequent Twitter hacker. But days later, after the suspicious tweets had never been deleted, the company confessed to Mashable that they staged a hack to the website as a means for gaining publicity for their upcoming 20th anniversary. 

Chris Arnold, a Chipotle representative, said, “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. 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.” Whatever the intent was, online skeptics were, well, skeptical, and left wondering why these clues had to be placed in the form of a hacked tweet.

Despite the criticism, Arnold pointed out that on the day of the staged hacking, Chipotle welcomed an additional 4,000 followers. What’s more, the account received about 12,000 re-tweets. This is a major upgrade from Chipotle’s regular numbers, which sees them gain about 250 new followers and 75 re-tweets per day.

What do you think though? Was this just a harmless cry for attention or do critics have a right to cry foul over the company’s annoying use of its social profile? Let us know in the comment section below.