No free lunch

OK, first question:

 

The president of KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN is AUSTRALIAN? WTF?!

 

Nice job, KFC. The very first thing I heard about your overwhelmingly successful promotion is that it's CANCELLED.

 

Oh, sorry: Not cancelled. I just have to visit a KFC, request a rain check request form, fill out the form and return it postmarked yesterday, after which you'll send me a rain check request confirmation form, which I will have to hand-carry to my local KFC regional franchise relations office, have stamped by Blanche, then scan and submit electronically to www.nochickenforyou.com. Then just sit back and wait for my voucher approval form, which will be valid sometime between Halloween and the Super Bowl, based on ZIP code.

 

WTF?!? Did anyone, at any point in planning this promotion, not say, "Wow, what if lots and lots of people respond this?" Didn't you run a basic best-case response scenario? "Say, Jenkins, I'm running some back-of-the-envelope calculations here, and it looks like if we get a 0.0021% response rate, we could have to give away 12 million chicken breasts. Lemme bounce that off Phil in accounting, but I think that puts us in government bailout territory."

 

Guys: If you can't fulfill the offer, DON'T RUN THE !#$%^&* PROMOTION. Ummmmm . . . test market, maybe? Say, run in Waukegan and Moline first to get a read? Just a thought.

 

Congratulations, KFC. Your entire marketing department was just granted instant tenure at the University of WTF.

(Hat tip: Dowding)