The publicity certainly would not have done them any harm. The "WTF" effect sparked curiousity.
And now that it has indeed turned out that Depp's actual look as Barnabas doesn't look like those paparazzi pics, all the negative talk the pics generated isn't going to matter one iota- especially when so many of the horror/entertainment Web sites that led the negative charge have backtracked and graciously admitted they were wrong to jump the gun.
I admire that, especially since I had given them more credit for knowing more about how production works than they obviously do.
In the end, the frenzy didn't hurt anyone - in fact, it helped with publicity.
I'm wondering if even...
The first part of arashi's post is a detail from the character descriptions in the published article that provided our first look at the official cast photo in this topic, so it's not a spoiler. The second part is her speculation.