Kentucky Fried Chicken's Ethics

KFC ‘s grilled chicken launch was the biggest in the chain’s history. It could also go down as an example of what a company shouldn’t do. Everyone knows that the ‘F’ in KFC stands for Fried, so suddenly promoting grilled chicken to a fast food restaurant that only serves fried chicken according to the name is stretching it a bit too much. KFC thought the way to meet this challenge was to spend millions of dollars on a TV ad campaign in Chicago. TV advertising has worked well for most fast-food introductions but by telling consumers to “Unthink KFC” seemed to demoralize the chain’s main focus, fried chicken. Whether it was working or not, the marketer of the company decided to promote it’s grilled chicken on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talk show. They offered two pieced of grilled chicken , two sides and a biscuit to anyone who downloaded a coupon within a two-day period which should have been a huge promotional coup. Instead, it turned to be a disaster when the company was unable to execute and actually had to rescind the offer. The multiple questionable decisions made by the company leads to more questions. Should the company change it’s name since fried chicken is not the main focus anymore. What should the company do to better promote their grilled chicken and also get their customers back while doing so. Last, should the company have rescinded their free offer after promoting it on a show watched by millions of people in the country. KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken which now also has it’s main focus on grilled chicken. One alternative is for the company to change the entire name since the future of the company is now both fried and grilled chicken. By keeping the same name, the company is trying to keep it’s old customers that only eat fried chicken as well attract new ones by promoting “unthink KFC”. The greed to keep old customers that are loyal to only fried chicken espedcially the name,is immoral. Changing the name that is suitable for both