You may remember Popeye’s $4.99 chicken promotion a few weeks ago.  There were lines, throngs of angry blacks…and apparently starving children.

Well, KFC one-upped Popeyes this week with a free chicken deal that was promoted with the Oprah show…with similar results.

The free chicken promotion was for KFC’s new grilled chicken meals.  To get a coupon, users were instructed to download an application that printed out the coupon.

First of all, the coupon printing application was adware.  Not a good start.  Next, as could be expected, people printed out tons of the coupons, and chaos ensued.

There were long lines, angry customers, 911 calls, and more.  Many stores were understaffed and unable to meet demand.  Some stores refused to accept the coupons at all, leading to more anger among customers.

Finally today KFC pulled the plug on the deal.  You can still get a raincheck for a free chicken meal, but this will be mailed to you so you’ll have to wait a while.

I’m surprised that KFC was overwhelmed with this promotion.  They sell cheap chicken by the bucket – I don’t know what they expected from their target demographic when they dreamed up giving away chicken.

Not only that, but I bet that over the past few days KFC didn’t sell very much chicken.  I mean, who’s going to wait an hour in line with rowdy customers for a bucket of wings?

In any case, there’s a marketing manager at KFC that’s probably going to get fired soon.  And for good reason – giving away free food in this economy is just asking for a riot.  And despite all of the publicity that KFC generated from this even, I’d say that most of it is negative, more than anything.

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