KFC Pays College Women for Ad Space on Buns

USA Today

 

KFC wants folks to watch its backside.

Or, more precisely, the backsides of female college students it's recruiting to promote its hot new bunless Double Down sandwiches.

Women on college campuses are being paid $500 each to hand out coupons while wearing fitted sweatpants with "Double Down" in large letters across their rear ends.

The promo comes as KFC is in the doldrums domestically. The world's largest chicken chain's U.S. same-store sales fell 7% in the second quarter. Nearly all its growth now is in international expansion.

Last week, the chain confessed that more than six in 10 Americans ages 18 to 25 — the chain's key demographic — couldn't identify who Colonel Sanders was in the KFC logo.

Now, it's turning to cute women parading around campus with "Double Down" emblazoned across their fannies.

The nation's largest women's group doesn't like it one bit. "It's so obnoxious to once again be using women's bodies to sell fundamentally unhealthy products," says Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women. What's more, she says, KFC has forgotten something important: Women make more than half the decisions about what to eat for dinner.

But KFC marketing chief John Cywinski says it's an effective way to catch the attention of young men — KFC's key customers and the biggest fans of Double Down.

As of Tuesday afternoon, KFC had received no complaints about the campaign, KFC spokesman Rick Maynard says. "We've taken a page out of the book of some apparel companies and sororities who have promoted in this way for years," Maynard says.

The program began last week at Spalding University in downtown Louisville. The chain plans to expand it to at least three more campuses. The additional schools and the women there will be picked via a Facebook promotion.

The stunt hasn't reached Colorado State University — and senior public relations major Candace Carlucci hopes it never does. "It may be funny, but it's also inappropriate and degrading," she says. "There must be another way for KFC to get its message out."

Brand guru Jonathan Salem Baskin says there's nothing "inherently wrong" with using women to attract guys, but in this case, "It's irrelevant to the product." KFC would do better, he says, to follow the McDonald's model: "Clean up your stores, fix the menu and please people with the food you make."

One point of confusion, he jokes: "I guess the buns do come with KFC's sandwich."

Teaching Young People How to Read Advertisements

NY Times

A federal agency is undertaking an effort to school youngsters in the ways of Madison Avenue.

 

 

The initiative seeks to educate children in grades four through six — tweens, in the parlance of marketing — about how advertising works so they can make better, more informed choices when they shop or when they ask parents to shop on their behalf.

The centerpiece of the effort is a Web site called Admongo (admongo.gov), where visitors can get an “ad-ucation” by playing a game featuring make-believe products closely modeled on real ones, among them Choco Crunch’n Good cereal, Cleanology acne medication, Double Dunk sporting goods and the Smile Meals sold at Fast Chef restaurants.

“Advertising is all around you,” the home page declares in urging youngsters to always ask three questions: “Who is responsible for the ad? What is the ad actually saying? What does the ad want me to do?”

The initiative is being sponsored by the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, which polices deceptive, fraudulent and unfair marketing and advertising practices. The bureau is enlisting Scholastic, the educational publishing company based in New York, to help distribute materials to teachers and classrooms.

The idea that children need to better understand how commercial speech differs from other forms of communication is not a new one. Many schools have courses in what is called media literacy, intended to help students analyze various methods of persuasion, among them sponsored messages.

The goal is generally “to help kids start to understand the commercial world they live in and to be alert to, and think critically, of advertising,” said David Vladeck, director of the bureau in Washington.

The belief that youngsters ought to be given additional tools to assist them in deciphering sales pitches has been gaining support as the Internet, and social media in particular, are used more for marketing.

“We’ve had some consumer-directed ads, directed to children, on advertising,” Mr. Vladeck said, “but nothing of the scope, depth and complexity” of the new effort.

As for the tone of the materials, they are meant to be “nonjudgmental,” Mr. Vladeck said, rather than presupposing there is nefarious purpose inherent in ads and that marketers continuously try to trick consumers into buying things they do not want or need.

“The vast majority of marketers sell lawful products to people who can lawfully buy them,” Mr. Vladeck said. “The game says advertising is pervasive and it’s good to know what it is, it’s good to think critically and think whether purchasing a product is in your best interest.”

On the other side of the coin, the bureau was also careful in developing the materials, he added, to avoid giving anyone grounds to complain that the effort “promotes commercialism by teaching kids advertising techniques.”

That tack was praised by C. Lee Peeler, president and chief executive of the National Advertising Review Council, which is the ad industry’s voluntary self-regulatory system. The council operates under the aegis of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, where Mr. Peeler is also an executive vice president.

The bureau’s effort will “teach kids how to swim in the ocean of advertising,” Mr. Peeler said, yet takes “a straightforward approach that does not go a step further and demonize advertising.”

“We were pretty impressed by what we saw,” he added, and the council intends to link to Admongo.gov from its own Web site (narcpartners.org).

Fleishman-Hillard, a public relations agency owned by the Omnicom Group, helped the bureau in developing the Admongo Web site, the online game and the teaching materials.

Asked if the participation of Fleishman-Hillard presents a conflict because the agency is part of the Madison Avenue marketing machine, Mr. Vladeck replied that persuasion is “what Fleishman-Hillard does, and they do it well.”

“They also know the tricks of the trade,” he added. “We’re tapping into their expertise.”

Likewise, the division of Scholastic that is handling the distribution of the materials to teachers and students works with corporations as well as government agencies and nonprofit organizations.

For instance, the division, known as Scholastic In School, teamed up with the Lexus unit of Toyota Motor for the Lexus Eco Challenge, a curriculum meant to teach teenagers about the environment.

“We help teachers explain the world around them to the children,” said Ann Amstutz Hayes, vice president at Scholastic In School. For the bureau, “we’re informing the kids about advertising,” she said, “because it’s so important they understand what it is and make informed decisions.”

The reason the curriculum is being aimed at students in the fourth through sixth grades is because that is when “they’re at the stage they’re developing their critical-thinking skills,” Ms. Amstutz Hayes said.

Mr. Vladeck said he hoped that with Scholastic’s assistance the bureau would be able to “get into a couple hundred thousand classrooms” around the country. The effort is being financed by “a little over $2 million,” he added.

The bureau is especially pleased with the online game, Mr. Vladeck said, adding that he has played it himself. “I was not able to get past Level Two,” he said, laughing. “My 12-year-old nephew, in 45 minutes, was already on Level Four.”

The bureau will announce the initiative on Wednesday at a news conference and on the “Today” show.

Perhaps the effort comes not a moment too soon. Adweek devotes this week’s issue to “Kids” and “How the industry is striving to conquer this coveted market.”