Daily Archives: May 9, 2009

KFC Oprah Free Chicken Coupon Follow Ups

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This just in from the Joe Duck “you can call me a chicken but don’t call me late for dinner” department:

The numbers are in for the coupon fiasco promotion and it appears my estimate of downloaded number (10 million) was very  good.  However it looks like eventually the total redemption will be greater than I predicted.

At an eventual redemption rate of 8 million coupons, food costs of 20% and non-fixed costs of another 20% (all guesstimates by me), KFC will have spent  40% x 8 million meals x $4 meal =  $12.8 million

Oprah says 10.5 million coupons were downloaded and 4 million used so far:

“We would like to apologize to our customers who have been inconvenienced by the overwhelming response to our free Kentucky Grilled Chicken offer,” said Roger Eaton, president of KFC U.S. “The lines of customers wanting to redeem their coupons have been out the door and around the block, so we’re unable to redeem customer coupons at this time.”

Eaton appeared on Winfrey’s show Friday via Skype to sort out what she referred to as the “chicken caper.”

Winfrey acknowledged some of the issues surrounding the campaign, and called the download of 10.5 million coupons and giveaway of $42 million worth of free food from KFC “quite a hookup.”

Eaton said 4 million meals had been redeemed by using the coupons, with 6.5 million meals from rainchecks still needing to be distributed.

Winfrey said the reaction to the chicken coupon surpassed even her giveaway of cars to audience members a few years ago.

“I was really deeply moved, first of all, by all the people who sent thank you’s for the chicken,” Winfrey said. “You know, I actually got more thank you’s for the chickens than we did for the cars, which is so amazing.”

Note to Oprah (who I love, but who I think may need some math tutoring)  Of course you got more thank yous for the chicken. You gave away 10 million chicken dinners and a few hundred cars.      I didn’t get either   :  (

Tweets in Space from Nasa

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I’ve been writing a lot lately about Twitter for many reasons, but I think two very good examples of why Twitter represents a key social media breakthrough are the upcoming Twitter tweets from space by NASA astronaut Mark Polansky and last month’s contest for followers between celebrity Ashton Kutcher and CNN news.   (Kutcher won by topping a million Twitter followers first).      Note that NASA and Kutcher – arguably two of the more technically adept big name brands, are not using Facebook to push content and interact with fans, they are using Twitter.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is a very open, interactive, public venue.    It’s almost ideally suited to superficial yet “somewhat intimate”  interaction with both a small and large audience, and I think this is the key brilliancy of Twitter.    It serves both as a messaging system with friends  or business associates but also as a kind of community public square that allows you to interact with millions of other people in an informal yet direct way.    Pushing out a note to the world via Twitter, especially if you have a lot of people following you, is likely to result in fast, often rewarding feedback.

For well over a decade  it has been clear that the internet is about *people* much more than it is  about technology or computers.   However it’s only in the last few years that the barriers to entry, the familiarity with the tools, widespread access to broadband, mobile phones, and more of the human components of the internet have come together in the necessary ways to push people ahead of technology as the key online consideration.   Twitter remains at the same time superficial and profound and is the culmination of that online socialization paradigm.    With only tens of millions using Twitter and over 200 million on Facebook there is clearly  plenty of  room for Facebook success, but I believe we’ll see Twitter continue to grow more rapidly and become the key global messaging tool – primarily because it’s so simple to use and much friendlier for mobile applications.

Yes, you should be on Twitter too and let me know so I can follow you!    Joe Duck on Twitter