PETA Takes on the Colonel: KFC and Potholes Redux

It turns out the KFC campaign to repair potholes has yet another twist. While not mentioned in the Business Week article (one wonders why), a reader alerted me to the fact that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) reportedly offered to cover potholes in selected cities and to contribute twice as a much ($6,000) as that contributed by KFC. In exchange, PETA would include the following chalk message--"KFC Tortures Animals" (that instead of the message--"Re-Freshed by KFC.").

PETA has been waging a vigorous campaign for several years against what PETA describes as abuse by KFC of chickens in the process of providing its poultry products to consumers. No city, it seems, has taken PETA up on its offer. That position was well-stated by the Media Relations Director of Chattanooga, Tennessee as follows:

"The City of Chattanooga receives donations from a variety of sources and is grateful for all of them, including that of KFC. While we appreciate PETA's dedication and passion towards their mission, it would be inappropriate to accept their offer with the awkward requirement that would effectively use the City of Chattanooga to malign a particular corporation."

And so the question: What exactly was the motivation of the KFC campaign to repair potholes? Was it primarily intended as a means to counter PETA's attacks on KFC, or was the message of good citizenry less concerned with PETA and more intended to burnish KFC's image with the ultimate purpose of reaping commercial benefit?

If the former, then KFC could have expected PETA to try and mount a counterattack. If so, one wonders how great a risk KFC viewed the likelihood of such a counterattack actually being carried out. Recall the words of the Chattanooga Media Director, which emphasized the negative aspect of the proposed PETA message as a major reason for rejecting PETA's offer (despite the fact that it was apparently more attractive financially). When weighing the positive message of KFC and the negative message of PETA, the advantage would seem to like with KFC. If so, the risk that KFC could be bested by PETA in this battle for the hearts and minds of the local citizenry seems moderate at best.

If the latter motivation was paramount for KFC, the risk that PETA would prevail seems even more remote. This is because, in such a situation, it appears even more unlikely that a city would accept PETA's offer. Under the KFC offer, the city is able to add to its coffers (albeit in a modest amount) while KFC ultimately benefits financially from the positive image that it fosters. Under such a view, the PETA counter-offer seems fundamentally out of place, and to accept it would involve the city in an unnecessary public controversy.

If the foregoing analysis is correct, then it suggests one more conclusion. PETA did not ab initio consider its likelihood of successfully convincing a city to accept its counter-offer to be high. From the beginning, PETA viewed its ultimate platform as the press, especially the on-line press, which would cover the proposed PETA counter-offer and thereby provide PETA with free media coverage. Such coverage would be welcomed by PETA supporters and might even succeed in adding new converts to the PETA clause.

See in this way, the KFC-PETA point/counter-point was win-win situation, each winning in a different arena and each directed towards a different audience.

Win-win: a view from the pasture

When Finger Licking Good Meets the Urban Pothole

An oft-stated observation made in connection with the economic crisis is that companies, when confronted with cuts in R&D, marketing, and advertising, have chosen first to cut their advertising budget as a means to bring expenses more in line with projected income. I would tend to believe that the reason for this lies less in the fact that advertising is less significant to the economic well-being of the company than is R&D or marketing, but rather that advertising is more akin to a current expense. As such, the absolute amount expended in a given short-term period can be calibrated to the general level of economic activity that is taking place, more or less, at the moment.

That said, the economic exigencies of the moment do seem to generate create ways to seek maximum advertising bang for the corporate buck. A real curiosity in this direction was noted in a short item that appeared in the April 20th issue of Business Week. Entitled "A Chicken in Every Pot(hole)", the item described how the corporate parent of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Yum!, expended $3,000 to fund the repair of 350 potholes in Louisville, Kentucky (if my memory serves me, Louisville is the corporate headquarters of Yum!). On each pothole, there appeared a message--"Re-furbished by KFC." Keeping with the low cost nature of this advertising campaign, the chalk-based advertising fades within a month or so. The item went on to note that the campaign has been extended to other towns, including Warren, Ohio and Chattanooga, Tennessee (for all of you non-Americans, an atlas might be in order to locate these two smallish towns, both of which are interestingly located in states that are contiguous with Kentucky).

Said the KFC spokesperson: "We thought we could refresh the streets and try a new form of advertising." Retorting with a degree of skepticism, brand consultant Laura Ries queried as follows: "What does deep-fried chicken have to do with potholes." Unfortunately, the Business Week item fails to consider the question further, and one can ask whether the item was brought simply as a short curiosity intended merely to entertain the reader rather than to consider how companies can successfully advertise despite the challenging economic times.

Okay, even if Business Week declined to engage in a serious consideration of the underlying issue involved, I feel compelled, if for no other reason that professional and intellectual curiosity, to offer several comments.

First, while the pothole cum civic message is characterized as advertising in the news item, it seems to me that it is more of a hybrid of sponsorship and advertising. By this mean I mean that the use of the KFC mark is connected with an activity which Yum! presumably wants to be connected, rather than merely an ad directed towards creating custom at the nearest KFC eatery. The comment by Laura Ries not to the contrary, it would appear that Yum! finds the connection between the KFC mark and good citizenry to be an attractive combination.

A SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITY IN THE MAKING

Second, the economic downturn does not mean that all forms of sponsorship have been put on hold. True, the trend has been to cut sponsorship of events at the mega level (especially in sports). Here, to the contrary, a modest amount of advertising expense was committed to funding a specific type of short-term sponsorship with presumed benefit to the overall perception of the brand.

Third, the ad/sponsorship campaign (if it can be called that) is local in character. Louisville is a mid-sized town best known for the Kentucky Derby; Warren and Chattanooga are even smaller. Perhaps the message of good corporate citizenry is more easily delivered in these secondary or tertiary urban settings. (Don't get me wrong, I was born and raised in another such town only 30 miles from Warren and there is a lot going for this kind of environment).

Thus, precisely because a major brand might choose to forgo a nationwide sponsorship campaign invites local experimentation. I suspect that there are large urban centers in the U.S. that would have been delighted to have had their potholes repaired. Assuming that this is impracticable from a budget point of view as a form of sponsorship, one wonders what a large company might to in very large urban center to achieve the same effect as the KFC-sponsored pothole covers in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee.

THE NEWEST LAB FOR ADVERTISING EXPERIMENTATION?