KFC's Super Bowl XLII marketing campaign - flying without a feather?

The upcoming Super Bowl XLII is a marketeer's dream arena.

Sponsors fork out big bucks to get themselves noticed - Fox is charging a record $2.7 million for each 30-second slot.

But one company launched a clever marketing campaign linking its name to the event without spending much money.

KFC Corp., is known for its creative (some would say: wacky) promotions over the years.
For the Super Bowl, it cooked up a clever one to promote its hot wings.
If a player or celebrity performer does an impromptu chicken dance in the end zone or on stage during the Super Bowl on Feb. 3, KFC will donate $260,000 to a charity in the name of that person. The person must perform at least three seconds of the "wing flapping" portion of the chicken dance, and only one donation will be made, according to a news release.
The donation will be made to the KFC Colonel's Scholars Program, a charity that provides scholarships to high school seniors planning to attend a public in-state college or university.
Also, people across the country can visit www.showusyourhotwings.com to upload their own chicken dance videos in the hope of winning a Super Bowl party.

"Talk about an offer worth showing off your Hot Wings for: this could be a great dance performance benefiting charity," said James O'Reilly, chief marketing officer for KFC.

"This will continue KFC's tradition of 'marketing first' promotions. We really hope someone shows the world his 'hot wings.'"

KFC is not an official sponsor of, or affiliated or associated with, the National Football League, the big game, or any other football-related entity.

KFC is not the only saves big time on sponsoring, but also on its PR.
Inviting the public to submit their videos is part of the recent consumer-generated media trend.

It's the ultimate low-cost/high-result strategy.

Just look at the following examples.
Lay's Doritos asked consumers to upload 30-second videos praising its chips, they received more than 1,000 entries. They picked two winners that aired as Doritos ads.
This year, Doritos invites musicians to submit original songs at myspace.com/DoritosCrashTheSuperBowl.
The song that wins online voting will air as a 60-second music video in the Super Bowl.

Considering the popularity of these campaings, they are here to stay - at least for now.

It is a win-win situation - the company saves big time on their PR budget and participants get a shot as their 15-minutes of fame.

How a viral marketing campaign went vitriolic – the Mozilla marketing mess

Mozilla normally markets its open-source browser using its Spread Firefox site and a host of fans to drum up new users.
In an effort to get a chuck of Microsoft’s market, it came up with an innovative online campaign that sadly backfired.
The “Fight Against Boredom” featured a YouTube movie which echoes “We are the World”.
Only in this case, the singers poured out statistics, comparing Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer users with Firefox users.
It included “fun facts” such as:
“15% more likely to have watched cartoons on TV within the last seven days” and “21% less likely to fish”.

However, it also included:
“23% less likely to have cancer” ; “25% less likely to have breast cancer” and “20% less likely to live with others suffering from cancer.”
These “statistics” also included that Firefox users were less likely to have high cholesterol or heart disease.

The TechCrunch blog was the first one to report on and object to the marketing program.
The readers’ comments make fascinating reading.
To give an example, Zachary wrote: "As a Firefox user who has cancer, I'm less than amused."

Paul Kim, Mozilla's vice president of marketing, tried to do some damage control.
He wrote on his blog:
“This is Paul Kim, VP of marketing for Mozilla.
I want to apologize to anyone who was upset or offended by some of the stats on the not yet final website for this campaign.
The list Techcrunch referenced was posted without a final review by Mozilla and wasn’t intended to be published as is.
We’re working right now to correct this on the site, which goes live in a final form later today.”

The apology doesn’t make sense. This kind of campaign should never have been conceived, not even as a rough concept.
I agree with blogger Tom Page, who points out that:
"Saying that it was not meant to be 'publicly available' makes it seem as if these comments are only acceptable as a private joke at Mozilla. Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, and if something like this came from Microsoft you'd go absolutely crazy."

Mozilla yanked the campaign.
What puzzles me most is the part that their PR Company played in this.
AKQA profiles itself as “ideas-lead agency” that holds the “Agency of the Year” title on “both sides of the Atlantic at the same time”.
You would expect more (cultural) sensitivity from an agency like this.
("Al AKQA", that also features a stuffed monkey on its website, claims $ 350M. in online media billing and 450 staffers).

Considering the gap between Firefox and its rival (according to the company Net Application, Inc. Firefox accounted for 16.8% of all browsers that visited the 40,000 sites the company monitors for its customers), this latest expedition in creative marketing will not help.

The lesson to be learned: marketing professionals need to be diligent in all their materials, even if it's only a rough concept.