Unless you were living under a rock a few months back, you heard about Oprah endorsing Kentucky Fried Chicken’s new grilled chicken meals. My thoughts have always been that it was a powerful campaign capable of bucketloads of publicity. I don’t know how much they paid Oprah to be their spokesperson, but other than that, the costs associated with each $3.99 meal they gave away (What – $1 maybe?) were a nominal expense for the widespread publicity that resulted.
Whether by design or due to lack of planning, it wasn’t long before KFC was offering rainchecks to would be taste-testers. It was a brilliant campaign any way you look at it — viral marketing at its’ best. As a former franchisee, I would have loved corporate to set a campaign in motion that would get me the amount of foottraffic participating franchisees enjoyed.
Of course, I’m assuming they picked up the free food bill? I don’t know – do they do that? If you have experience as a franchisee participating in these types of campaigns, let us know the answer to this in the comments section.
I only hope the meal was good enough to convert many of those ‘tryers’ into ‘buyers’ – the real measure of PR success.
Here’s my take on the free chicken fiasco:
On the flip side, a lot of people were indignant about this campaign and the fact that Oprah was endorsing fast food, The fact is that even this added to the viral buzz. Afterall, bad publicity is still publicity!
Here’s a real life illustration of what Geoffrey Moore wrote about in his book “Crossing the Chasm”. Although it was written almost 2 decades ago, the principles that explain why some products become mainstream while others fizzle are sound.
Here’s a dude who seemed a little radical, perhaps eccentric at first (could also be classified as innovative in marketing circles). But then people began to groove on what he was selling. They began to buy into his “product” because it filled a void they hadn’t realized existed. In this case we’re talking about dancing, self expression – does your product or brand aspire to meet the unarticulated needs of its’ users?
Is the momentum of that which you’re creating — as the song says — “unstoppable”?