Following our post yesterday, “Google, Goats, Free Grilled Chicken, and Ways to Build Your Marketing Brand,” blog reader Mary H. Ruth said,
“Ha ha! Great post! Poetic! Hangs together just fine, IMO.
Appreciate the recognition of free. I find that locally, the concept is anathema. Clearly, though, without some level of free it will soon be impossible to attract a market.”
Thank you Mary, it good to have fans, uh, well a fan. And it is good to hear business and marketing people who “get it.”
Several times today I heard someone criticizing the wisdom, or lack thereof, by Kentucky Fried Chicken to give away a free meal. The disparagement was the same from each critic,”How can they afford that?”
Why don’t business marketing people understand the beauty of giving away what you do best? Or how perfect KFC’s timing is?
Provided, there is not revolt and anarchy by people waiting lines for their free meal or that America doesn’t simply run out of chickens, then “Free Chicken Dinner” is a perfect way for Kentucky Fried Chicken to promote their new product.
Sure they could have spent millions on production and air time for television commercials or other types of advertising campaigns that might or might not have persuaded people to go into a KFC and order the new grilled chicken meal. Some of the people who saw the commercial would have been people who were never going to KFC whether it was free or you paid them to go. Others might have liked to try the product but didn’t live close enough to a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant for it to be feasible. There would have even been people watching the commercial who were allergic to chicken. Yet KFC’s advertising dollar would have been the same amount spent on each of the groups as it was for all the groups of customers who really were a potential KFC grilled chicken customer.
But who has money to gamble on their advertising and marketing efforts these days? So instead of dollars spent on design, writing, production, air time and all the other costs of traditional advertising, KFC chose to spend their money on CHICKEN—a product they no doubt already get at the lowest possible cost they can.
Clearly, they believe in their new product. They are convinced that the best way to turn you into a KFC grilled chicken customer is to give it to you… absolutely free. It is a move they can make with a good deal of confidence that while a percentage of the people who take them up on their offer will never become paying clientele, most of the people who go to a website and download a coupon, print it, and head for the closest KFC, are a highly targeted representation of KFC’s best potential market.
KFC didn’t hire a company to do a costly market assessment of who their client is for grilled chicken and how to reach him or her. They simple let their target market sort itself out and show up at their door.
And in the process of launching an ad campaign built not out of print, ink, and airtime, but simply out of chicken and mashed potatoes, KFC has also given all the rest of us involved in business marketing, a very clear lesson on the effectiveness of social networking. Heck, they didn’t even pay for the TV time to tell you about their free offer; they were perfectly willing to let the Oprah Winfrey Show take care of that expense, with follow-ups by all the bloggers and social networkers who were going to keep on spreading the message.
From all we can tell at this point, this is truly an outstanding business marketing concept, loaded with tons of potential relationship factor, built-in reasons for others to spread the message for them, and a perfect example of thinking outside the red and white chicken dinner box.
…Or at least Mary H. and all of us at the Obvious Expert blog think it is.
