In February 2018, a curious thing happened to KFC
restaurants across the UK and Ireland: they ran out of their world famous
chicken. Astonishingly, patrons showed up to find limited menu options or
completely closed stores. The crisis unfolded quickly and went viral with upset
customers posting their grievances on social media.
Instead of coming out with a standard press release and
apology in response and scrambling to save face, KFC leaned into the crisis and
embraced it as an opportunity to ingeniously address the incident with creative
flare. They set up a website to direct customers to open KFC restaurants with
chicken as well as took to social media to respond to specific customer
complaints. To cap off the eventful week, KFC took out a full-page newspaper ad
and rearranged its letters to spell out “FCK” followed by a candid, witty
apology. This print ad went viral and was immediately lauded by ad firms.
This is a great example of effective crisis management and
turning what would otherwise be a negative public relations situation into a
positive marketing event. KFC was able to genuinely connect with its customer
base and demonstrate empathy through sympathetic tweets. The British humor
infused in the print ad further humanized the corporation and made it more
relatable to its customers. KFC was sincere from the start and accepted full
responsibility of the situation. It’s a fine line for a corporation to step out
of the traditional public relations stance, but KFC managed to strike the
perfect balance and find the silver lining amidst the chicken crisis.
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