Just a quick thought on last week's marketing fiasco presided over by KFC. In case you missed it, well, you missed it - no chicken for you. Kentucky Fried Chicken unveiled their new UNTHINK KFC marketing campaign to promote their new - grilled - chicken. (In which case I think it should be "KGC.") Oh and whoever came up with the idea to "Un-Think" a popular brand must be reading the John Donahoe Guide to Disruptive Innovation.
Coordinating with the all-powerful Oprah, they made online coupons available to anyone and everyone to download. Oprah announced the coupons on her show, the Holy Bible was quickly updated, and chickens ran for cover. Each coupon promised a two-piece grilled chicken dinner, including two sides and a biscuit.
The coupons were such a success that stores could not keep up. KFC's offer sent the chain skyrocketing to the No. 1 topic on Twitter. By Wednesday, blogs began reporting "riots" at New York City KFCs. On Thursday, local news crews interviewed fuming customers getting turned away in other markets, including Chicago. Angry Oprah watchers complained about rude service, and media complained about a PR team that seemed asleep at the wheel. So what went wrong? And how does this relate to eBay?
KFC Management Screwed Up
The campaign had been in planning stages for months. KFC was negotiating with Oprah for the shout-out and once they got the go-ahead they had a one week window to run the promotion.
As with many franchises, some KFC stores are owned by individual franchisees, and some are corporately owned. The deal with Oprah evidently included her reimbursing the corporate stores for the free food giveaway. Stores owned by franchisees were not reimbursed, but were expected to participate in the promotion anyway. eBay sellers, is this starting to sound familiar yet? Some non-corporate stores balked and said they would not participate. That's a bit of a PR problem when the Most Excellent Oprah said we're gettin' some free chicken.
The biggest problem came when stores began running out of the new grilled chicken, and that happened really fast. People were really getting angry and it was all over the news. Finally, to top it all off - KFC pulled the plug on the whole thing.
I know I summarized this, but the bottom line is this from Advertising Age:
According to Zeta Interactive, which monitors blog chatter, KFC generally popped up in about 538 blog posts daily, with 72% of mentions positive. During the promotion, that number soared to 1,319 mentions, 89% of which were positive. But cutting the cord on Thursday had an immediate effect, with 772 posts. Negative ratings shot up, to 33%
"The free-chicken promotion created a sense of enthusiasm within online communities and enhanced KFC's online reputation," Al DiGuido, CEO of Zeta Interactive, said in an e-mail. "However, as soon as KFC decided to halt the promotion, their brand suffered a brutal backlash, plummeting down to 67% positive buzz. With this overwhelmingly negative response, KFC did more damage to its brand by running an incomplete promotion than if they had just not launched the campaign in the first place."
Why this sounds familiar...
eBay has been at odds with many of its sellers due to promotions and policy changes over the past eighteen months. Sellers feel eBay corporate should give them more of a say in decisions that affect their business. John Donahoe, and eBay corporate feel they know what's best to protect the "community" of buyers.
Often, even well-intentioned promotions have the effect of hurting small sellers. When eBay promotes the items of sellers who offer free shipping, the buyers come, and the sellers pay the price. Similar to the franchisees who were placed between hungry customers and giving away free food. They lose either way. Many of those customers weren't interested in KFC as much as a free meal. (I can speak from experience - that describes me.)
The bottom line is sellers are unhappy, buyers are unhappy, and eBay's ratings go down in the public eye. Too much credit has been given to corporate eggheads. "Book smarts" does not equal "people smarts." They are so far removed from the day to day needs and operations of their customers that this type of fiasco will continue to happen.
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