KFC’s Reputation Management Failure

It is my guess that KFC did not have a reputation management plan in place before last weeks YouTube video of rats in their restaurant hit the Internet. Before you could say “rats” the video had gone viral and KFC had a huge public relations problem on their hands.

Unlike PR crisis in the past, where the duration of the crisis was limited to people’s memories, location and new cycles, the Internet means that the rat issue in Greenwich Village is not just a local NYC story. Suddenly it is a national story that has a lot of negative implications for KFC.

KFC failure to have a reputation management plan in place became painfully obvious when they issued their press release.

“This is an isolated incident at a single restaurant at 331 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village, New York, and it is totally unacceptable,” said the statement, attributed jointly to KFC and Taco Bell. “The restaurant is closed and we will not allow it to be reopened until it has been sanitized and given a complete clean bill of health.”

Not grasping that this was no longer a local story, but that it has mushroomed into a national story was a critical mistake. “There’s nothing more viral on the negative side than rats,” said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “In the world of fast food, hygiene is the No. 1 talk driver, and rats take it to food-hygiene-on-steroids level. Rats are Defcon 5″

The long-term repercussions for KFC are huge. A Google search for KFC + Rats is full of links to the video and story. According to Pete Blackshaw:

“By midday Friday, more than 1,000 blogs had cited or spread the story and footage, according to a Technorati search. A search on Google News for “rats and KFC” yielded 443 stories and “rats and Taco Bell” some 600 stories posted on websites of publications from Wyoming to the U.K.”

This PR disaster will haunt KFC for years online. Would a reputation management program have stopped all the bad press? No, but it would have ensured that positive articles about KFC would have appeared/would appear in search engine results, blogs, and community postings. And a good reputation management program would have cost a lot less than the millions in sales that KFC has lost as a result of this story.