KFC Skips Ads, Fixes Potholes Instead

There’s so much talk about how important it is to spend your marketing budget wisely these days. But if traditional advertising isn’t working like it used to, then what? KFC came up with a pretty good use for their advertising dollars recently. They’re sending the Colonel to five major metropolitan cities to repair potholes.

It’s not as weird as it sounds. They’ve recently launched a campaign aiming to focus on the high-quality and unsurpassed freshness of their chicken. As a tie-in, they’ve decided to “re-freshen” streets in five cities by filling potholes, and marketing them “Re-Freshened by KFC”. It’s a win-win-win. The public gets better streets, the city saves a ton of maintenance costs, and KFC gets the credit for responsible marketing, and news outlets, Twitter streams and blogs just like this one are telling EVERYONE all about it. Wouldn’t it be great if more marketing was for the good of all mankind? I am curious as to why they didn’t choose to integrate this effort with an interactive and social media presence. I think a microsite with a description of KFC’s campaign and their efforts along with video, images, and more could have given the campaign even more horsepower. And a strong presence on Twitter could have been really powerful in spreading the world-of-mouth marketing. Even still, this is a pretty innovative use of a marketing budget. Btw, KFC – We have a few potholes here in Washington, DC that are RIPE for filling. Come oonnnnn down!