I blogged yesterday about my theories as to why KFC seems to have bad customer service, even though the chain gives so much lip-service to customers.
If you can’t provide good restaurant service, how about doing public service instead?
As part of a new marketing campaign, KFC has offered to fill potholes in city streets in return for being allowed to stencil “Re-freshed by KFC” on the patched pavement in a “chalky stencil likely to fade away in the next downpour.” So far the program is only operating in Louisville, but KFC plans on taking the program to four more cities (hat tip to Jessie Sackett).
Although I admire the creativity behind this marketing campaign, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I don’t see any reason why KFC should be particularly good at filling potholes, and I don’t really see how potholes tie back to chicken. One virtue of the pothole campaign is that, at least in principle, it should be possible to measure (probably imprecisely) whether or not it works.
KFC filling potholes reminds me a little bit of one of the gang leaders Sudhir Venkatesh used to hang out with. This gang leader spent a lot of time and effort cultivating community support. Gang members would pick up garbage in the neighborhood, and the gang leader would buy sneakers for the young kids in the area. Like the executives at KFC, the gang leader wanted community members to view his organization in a positive light. The support of the citizens was a lot more important to the gang, however, than it is to KFC. So my guess is that the return on investment from the gang’s community service was a lot higher than KFC’s.
Alas, the gang leader’s social service push did not have a happy ending. The higher-ups in the gang sent some thugs to beat the gang leader up when they heard he had the gang’s foot soldiers doing neighborhood clean-up. The gang was all about making money, not serving the neighborhood, they told him. From that point on, he was to focus exclusively on selling drugs. His attempts to convince them that public service was contributing to long-term profitability fell on deaf ears.
Like the folks who run big corporations and obsess over hitting the quarterly earnings targets, the top members of the gang were not worried about long-term profits; after all, there was a good chance they weren’t going to be around long enough to reap the rewards.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
It’s cheap to fill potholes and get your name on them. More importantly- popular blogs like Freakonomics are likely to read about this strange advertising campaign and write about it- as will the local papers- self generating advertising in large media for next to nothing- pretty smart.
I shouldn’t deny that KFC was once one of my favourite restaurant.However,In shenzhen ,guangdong,It’s service didn’t change,the content of food changed,It became smaller and smaller,and amount of chicken part such as chicken leg or wings become smaller and smaller,It make me dissatisfied.I shouldn’t agree to this,I should remind the CEO of KFC of not to go back to bad service,and should offer to the customer in China a larger part of chickens.and Let’s eat comfortable and satisfied.Ok.Mr.Levvit.
So someone in KFC marketing decided it was time for a sidewalk-based meme/viral marketing campaign, and sold it to upper management based on the existing Toynbee tiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles
Here in Seattle, I couldn’t care less who fills the potholes, as long as somebody does!
The city sure as heck doesn’t bother….
I think “a chicken in every pothole” was one of Wavy Gravy’s campaign slogans during his hilarious (though unsuccessful) 1990 run for mayor in Berkeley.
Hamas also provides social services to the people of Lebanon.
It’s a common thing in 4th generation warfare.
The Taliban also provided something similar in Afganistan.
“I don’t see any reason why KFC should be particularly good at filling potholes, and I don’t really see how potholes tie back to chicken”
Who says potholes have to tie back to chicken! Not every ad and marketing campaign is focused only on the product they sell. Having the name on the covered potholes is a good ad, no?
I think its a stretch to compare this with the gang-leader in South Chicago!
Finally, KFC has found a good use for their secret recipe.