The only reason we can think of for Chipotle to stage that odd series of tweets over the weekend — making it appear that perhaps the account had been hacked by a mild-mannered fella or lady trying to make guacamole — is a bid for attention from the cool kids on Twitter. Because as it turns out, that’s exactly what the company is admitting, that it made it seem its Twitter account was hacked when really it was all about getting people to talk about it.

Well, it worked, because here we are talking about it (or at least writing about it and reading the words and then perhaps muttering, “What the heck, Chipotle?).

As it turns out, it was all part of Chipotle’s 20th anniversary celebration, which includes a 20-day long treasure hunt called “Adventurito,” reports Mashable’s Seth Fiegerman. The tweets were all little bits of a puzzle that led back to Sunday’s puzzle about what Chipotle uses to make guacamole.

“We thought that people would pay attention, that it would cut through people’s attention and make them talk, and it did that,” a representative told Mashable. “It was definitely thought out: We didn’t want it to be harmful or hateful or controversial.”

“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,” he added.”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.”

This isn’t an entirely new tactic — Denny’s said it hacked itself but just to put up a large photo of waffles — but it’s confusing, nonetheless. Sure, use Twitter to incorporate a puzzle, but then to also tell everyone everything was “fine” now would indicate that something had been not fine, or bad. It just seems a bit… off. But hey, all’s well that ends well and all that.

Chipotle Faked Its Twitter Hack [Mashable]

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