I hate writing posts where I slam people for shitty work because ‘What do I know?’ I don’t really have much experience. But sometimes the criticism is warranted. Take for example the many blunders from Yum Brands.
Most recently, they requested 50 Cent to change his name to 79, 89 or 99 Cent for a day to help promote T-Bell’s new value menu. The payoff? A pathetic $10,000 donation to a charity of 50’s choice. Are you kidding me? Anyone with the financial stability of 50 Cent is going to laugh at your offer; they’d rather donate the 10K to charity to have Taco Bell leave them the hell alone.
But this isn’t the first piece of excellent work on Yum’s behalf. Oh no, KFC offered Rihanna and Chris Brown free wings if they showed up at one of their stores. Wonder what dinosaur thought of that gem. I just can’t believe how that ridiculously prejudicial idea even made it to the editors.
One last beaut, apparently KFC also offered to donate $260,000 to its own educational foundation if an NFL player ‘flapped their wings’ in the end zone during the Super Bowl. Glad to see it takes an act of stupidity by someone else for Yum to donate money to their own foundation.
To Yum’s credit, they did plan one decent promotion of late. During March Madness, if a bottom-seeded team advanced to the Final Four, Pizza Hut would give away free pizza to that campus. Of course, this feat has never been achieved, and likely never will. I don’t love this promotion, but it doesn’t place the brand in a compromising position, and even aligns the brand with underdog teams which I don’t think occurs enough.
I’m all about donating money through creative avenues, and I know you can’t just give all your profits away on a whim, but these acts of stupidity leave me wanting to avoid being associated with their brands.
I pulled the vitals of this post from an article on Ad Age. Give them some love too!