If you were not aware, on the May 5th episode of the Oprah Show, they did a show called Harpo Hookups where they did cool things for some of their viewers. As a gift to her viewers, they made available online a coupon for a free KFC 2 piece Grilled Chicken meal. Not just the chicken, but the meal with two sides. And while just being on Oprah is a marketers fantasy, the social media crowd got in on it and it was the biggest topic on Facebook and Twitter. A marketing home run, right?

Yes, but it highlights how so many companies confuse advertising and publicity with marketing. It is what I feel can be called Fallout from the Oprah Effect. While executives at KFC are celebrating and pouring over traffic numbers for this two week long experiment, perhaps they might want to take a look at the total experience that their consumers are having while sampling their restaurants. My question is this: is there goal to get customers to add on to this order while there or do they want repeat business from these new consumers? If it is the latter, they have some issues.

What follows is my experience when going to redeem my coupon. I am well aware that it is just one experience at one restaurant in one city. But, if this is the way this company operates all of their stores, they are going to have a very difficult time bringing back the Oprah audience, of which I am not, but am married to.

Let me start off by saying that I was very happy to get a free lunch. I would put up with just about anything for it, so this is not me complaining about something I did not pay for. I was just struck by what somebody who had never been to KFC might see going there for the first time. And it all started before I walked in the front door!

• Getting out of my car, I noticed a vehicle parked in front of the drive-thru. Taped to the back of the car was a hand written note “Drive-thru is closed. Use front counter. Sorry for the inconvenience.” Fortunately, I was eating in.
• Upon walking in the front door, it seemed a bit warm. Apparently, the air conditioning was not working with the temperature rising outside here in Arizona.
• Once at the counter, I noticed smoke in the kitchen, approximately 5-6 workers running around in the back and nobody at the counter, except a kid who was bringing food up that just stared at me.
• After about 3 minutes, a girl came to the register and I don’t believe she asked if she could help me, but more or less looked at me to come over.
• When I presented the coupon to her, she grabbed and set it to the side like it was really an inconvenience to her. No engagement, just ring it up and hand me the cup for my drink.
• The food was fast! I will give them that. I had my meal before I could even get my drink. That was cool, but once I got, it definitely was not as good as the same meal that I had purchased last week. There was not nearly as much seasoning and the pieces were tiny. Again, I understand that this is sampling and there should not be five pounds of chicken on the plate, but are you trying to keep me as a customer or get me out of the way?
• The table that I sat down at was filthy. This does not come as a surprise to me at a fast food restaurant, but upon further examining, the whole place was a mess. The trash had not been taken out so customers had begun stacking it on top of the trash cans and the floor was covered in debris.

So what, you might ask, is the purpose of this rant? I am, by no means, trying to pile on KFC. I love their food and I want them to do well. But, my question is this:

If you were able to get on the Oprah Show, would you have your entire organization, from top to bottom, ready to superserve this huge, new audience to win new business?

If you believe that your marketing begins and ends with the ad buy or the publicity stunt, we might as well build a camp fire and burn the money in it. I am not the first to say this, nor am I a self-proclaimed expert or guru, but I believe marketing should be the sum of the consumer experience including the sights, sounds, taste and feelings that they come away with. With all the media that is consumed today, good word of mouth is probably the most trusted and valuable marketing that a company can have today.

If you have a bunch of Oprah Moms saying that your business is dirty with poor customer service, that can’t be good. Let the fallout begin…

UPDATE: I guess I was lucky to get chicken at all. More stories of the fallout here and here.