Update:   Yes, the KFC Coupon story is growing in complexity, nuance, and good old KFC chicken tastiness.

OK, so this KFC Chicken post is partly an  examination of the rise of Oprah’s Online  Omnipresence, partly a helper for my fellow KFC chicken loving blog readers, and partly a search ranking experiment.   The KFC Coupon for free chicken, referenced on Oprah today, is here .   The KFC Coupon above is NOT linked to my words “KFC Coupon” because that would mess up the experiment!   The only problem is that the site appears to be totally overwhelmed with requests for this offer which is pretty generous:  Free two pieces and sides for up to four people.    Feed your family free on KFC!

You want to click here – probably later this evening – for the free KFC chicken coupons.   Print out four and take the family, but NOT GOOD on mother’s day and SHAME ON YOU for even contemplating that cheapskate option!

I’m torn between thinking this is a genius move to swing millions of people back into the KFC fold and thinking it’s an idiot move for costing KFC a fortune (as in a real fortune.  Let’s assume a coupon print level of 10 million and use level of 20%.  They are giving away 2 million meals that would normally run about $5.   At a food cost of 20% and other non-fixed costs of about 20% the product cost alone will run KFC 4 million.)  This  for an offer that will bring in almost no immediate revenues.    As a branding play I want to follow this closely because my working hypothesis has always been that brand advertising generally fails but the failures are covered up by the very clever (and often very attractive) marketing firm sales reps.    At the KFC level the metrics are probably internal and less biased though so this one will be fun to watch.

Of course the value of the social media  may wind up putting this campaign into the “positive ROI” territory as  thousands of bloggers and Twitter folks like me are sucked into the greasy (wait, I mean grilled) chicken action.   KFC will soon the top trending topic on Twitter.    Chickens all over America have a  lot to fear today.

I’m a fan of their chicken but haven’t eaten there in some time – probably because deli chicken at supermarkets keeps me happy when I go into a frenzy for a fried chix fix.

Oprah apparently likes the new KFC Grilled Chicken and on the show offered a coupon for a free meal to *every person in the world* via an online website.   This appears to have created what I predict may be the biggest online feeding frenzy of all time since printing out the coupons requires some software that is loaded during the process.  So far I’ve tried about 5 times and each time get error messages I assume are related to massive server loads.

Oprah’s newfound Twitter enthusiasm notwithstanding, I’m guessing that the demand for this failed to recognize that the coupon story would spread like wildfire online to people who don’t watch the show (I learned about it from a Twitter person).

Wow, the fried plot is thickening.  Some stores are not honoring some coupons? Baltimore  Chicken Coupon News