SALT LAKE CITY — It began in August when images of a botched restoration job from an 81-year old Spanish grandmother, Cecilia Giménez, quickly became a viral Internet sensation. It hit mainstream in October when Giménez, played by actress Kate McKinnon, made it to Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update segment.

Giminez's non-recognizable restoration of a century-old fresco painting of Jesus at her local church in north-eastern Spain forced even BBC Europe correspondent Christian Fraser to describe it as "a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic." It's not exactly what one would consider good press. But as news spread of the restoration job, now known as "Beast Jesus," flowers began appearing outside Giminez's home. The painting also started attracting so many tourists that it is now roped off and watched over by security guards.

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Woman who ruined priceless fresco demands royalties

The 80-year-old Spanish woman who botched the restoration of a painting of Christ, subsequently turning it into a major tourist attraction for her church, is now demanding a cut of the revenue the church has made off the painting.

In addition, tens of thousands of people signed an online petition praising Giminez's restoration as a "daring work" and even as "endearing and loving act, a clever reflection of the political and social situation of our time."

So perhaps Phineas T Barnum, the 19th-century American circus owner and notorious self-publicist, may have been correct with the adage widely attributed to him that, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

Let's take another look at some recent bad press with KitchenAid. The night of the first presidential debate, a tweet published from KitchenAid's official Twitter account contained a disparaging remark about President Obama's late grandmother. The senior director of branding for KitchenAid, Cynthia Soledad, quickly took control of the KitchenAid account to issue a follow-up tweet that sought to "personally apologize" to the President and his family, as well as to "everyone on Twitter" for the "offensive tweet." She then explained that an employee had intended to tweet the message through a personal account, but mistakenly broadcast it via the corporate handle.

Result of the bad press: the number of KitchenAid Twitter followers increased by more than 2,500. (Full disclosure: I am one of them. They have great recipes such as one I just tried for orange, spiced Belgian waffles.)

The real question is will the bad press translate into decreased sales? I'm fairly confident no one will base their next $400 mixer purchase off the story. KitchenAid also now has 2,500 new followers viewing the company's tweets on the newest and best products from KitchenAid. If I was a betting woman, I'd put my money on the bad press having a positive impact on sales down the line.

So is there a guiding philosophy of when bad press can create a positive response? A recent study has shed a little more light on the subject. Research led by Jonah Berger, a marketing professor from the Wharton School of Business, has shown there are occasions when bad publicity or a bad campaign can actually serve to increase company sales.

As part of Berger's study, sales patterns of several hundred books reviewed in the New York Times were tracked. As expected, good reviews helped increase book sales, typically ranging from 32 percent to more than 50 percent. Negative book reviews caused sales to drop on average of 15 percent.

But, there was one group of books that, immediately after receiving a bad review, experienced a 45 percent increase in sales. This held even when the criticism was especially scathing. For instance a review that stated, "The characters do not have personalities so much as particular niches in the stratosphere," helped sales more than quadruple. Why? These books were penned by unknown authors. Berger reasoned that by making potential customers aware of the availability of a product that they would not normally have heard about, even the most negative review will act as a positive one.

In follow-up studies it was discovered that the time between a negative review and when a purchasing decision is made can also have a significant influence. With well-known authors, negative reviews hurt sales regardless of the time between a review being published and a purchase being made. But, unknown authors very quickly recovered from the detrimental impact of a negative review.

So what can we learn from this?

"Companies understandably try to quash negative publicity, but our analysis suggests this isn't always the best tactic," said Berger "When an established brand is at stake—or in a product category, such as cars, where advertising budgets and pre-review awareness are generally high—it's smart to make an effort to limit bad press. But if the negative publicity seems likely to increase brand awareness, smaller or unknown brands would often do better to let it go. They might also consider undertaking potentially controversial moves to increase their visibility. If a risky tactic gets a bad response, the attention might nevertheless increase product recognition and ultimately boost sales."

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