Chipotle appeared to be the latest brand to have its Twitter account hacked on Sunday when its main account, @ChipotleTweets, posted a series of confusing and seemingly random tweets over the course of an hour. Now, the company has come forward and admitted that it faked having its account hacked as part of a publicity stunt tied to its 20th anniversary promotional campaign.

"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."

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Chipotle is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a 20-day long treasure hunt called "Adventurito," which features 20 days of puzzles. Most of the tweets posted were fragments about ingredients, which Arnold said was intended to tie into Sunday's puzzle about the ingredients Chipotle uses to make guacamole.

"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."

According to Arnold, Chipotle's Twitter account added more than 4,000 followers the day of the "hack," compared to its normal rate of adding about 250 followers a day. The supposedly hacked tweets, which have not been deleted, were retweeted about 12,000 times. By comparison, Chipotle's Twitter account usually sees about 75 retweets per day.

Chipotle isn't the first brand to fake having its Twitter account hacked. Shortly after Burger King and Jeep had their accounts hacked in February, both MTV and BET decided to stage their own hacks to get in on the press coverage.

Some on Twitter were quick to criticize those brands for trying to punk readers, but Arnold says the reaction to Chipotle's bizarre tweets was "overwhelmingly positive." In fact, he says the company may go so far as to release a t-shirt tied with the words "Please Twitter end Twitter," one of the infamous tweets from the episode.

Regardless of the reception of the fake hack, Arnold says it's unlikely Chipotle will pull a similar stunt anytime in the future.

"It's certainly not a well you can go to often," he says.

In case you missed it, here were the original tweets:

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Image: Flickr, Atomic Taco