More like unthink your marketing campaign.
Last week, Oprah promoted a free chicken campaign. You went to unthinkfc.com to print out a coupon for a free lunch. It was all over the radio. I listened to 106.1 in Dallas, Kidd Kraddick in the Morning show. They promoted it and then as they were spouting the website, they realized what it spelled.
KFC’s promotion was Unthink KFC. Unthink how you think about KFC. Unfortunately, they did not realize (or did not believe other people would) that the site name was unthin KFC. The morning hosts started to laugh about it and one of them actually said, “unthin KFC? How about fat and gross KFC.”
Instead of promoting healthier food at KFC, now they were promoting that KFC is fat and gross. Googling “unthin KFC” shows that a lot of other people think the same thing. Maybe KFC was thinking “Unthink fried chicken” or that two k’s would be a problem and just one was needed. Regardless, people are now thinking, “Unthin KFC”. Definitely the opposite of what KFC wanted. What a disaster. I
This shows that when you are doing a marketing campaign you really need to think things through and get some customer validation in some small way first. Obviously, they did not or they would have come up with something else. Maybe they got too far along and felt they could not stop? That was a mistake too.
Maybe next time they should try, “Notfatandgrosskfc.com”? Probably a bad idea.
FYI, I actually like KFC. Let me reiterate, I love KFC. Furthermore, they were featured on a business show about 16 years ago on their introduction of their brand to Japan. It was a great lesson in getting to know your community and customer base. They launch was a big success. I wonder what happened here.
Learn from this mistake!
