Kenneth Cole, Habitat and George Santayana

Kenneth Cole, outfitters to the (non-news reading?) aspirational, tried to tag their brand to the Egyptian revolution today with a tasteful twt:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at (link).

To say that it flopped is putting it mildly - cue mass uproar on Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, the media et al, and an (eventual) apology. Now, George Santayana, an Spanish American philosopher of c 1900, noted that:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

We take you back to the Habitat/Twitter debacle in 2009, when Habitat tried to spam its way onto the Iranian revolution twitterstream. That didn't work very well either - cue apologies, humiliation and blaming the whole thing on an (imaginary?) Intern.

No doubt Kenneth Cole would have loved to blame all this on an Intern, but clearly didn't read up on Habitat's tricks before apologising (photo above, courtesy MikeST. I don't know if its a real stick-on or a photoshop (suspect the latter), but it's pretty fast work).

Update - a Kenneth cole mocking site, @KennethColePR has been set up - gems such as:

"Austrian Men: Got a daughter you've impregnated locked in the basement? Cheer her up with a new sexy KC two-piece. "

and

“Our new slingback pumps would make Anne Frank come out of hiding"

Oscar Wilde (A contemporary of Santayana) pointed out that all publicity is good publicity, we shall see....


(Hat tip @deejackson and @joannejaccobs for heads up)