KFC’s Free Food, Web Content to Push New Grilled Items

Monday April 27 was UNFry Day at most KFC restaurants, as the quick-service chicken chain gave away samples of its latest attempt to tap into the healthy eating trend with a slate of menu items that are grilled, not fried.

All day yesterday, participating stores in the 5,100-unit chain gave away one piece from its new Kentucky Grilled Chicken menu to customers who requested it (wing, breast, drumstick or thigh, at the managers’ discretion.)

The new initiative is supported by an online and offline campaign that asks consumers to “UnThink KFC” and directs them to a microsite that offers both nutritional information and engaging content centered on the new products.

For example, visitors can play a keyboard version of a dance game or upload video of their own chicken dances. They can also see outtakes and additional materials around the new broadcast commercials KFC has mounted for the KFC Grilled line, including those featuring TV chefs Sandra Lee and G. Garvin.

KFC and Draftfcb have also designed a clever application for the iPhone that can mount “Grillz”—photos of mouths full of teeth with jeweled braces spelling out messages like “Unthink” and “Diva” —on users’ handset screens. Users can hold the phone over their mouths, screen side out, and look like they’re speaking with digital lips that move roughly in sync with their speech.

“For us, the ‘Unthink’ campaign is about showing people that there is more to KFC than fried chicken,” Draftfcb Chicago and West Coast executive creative director Tom O’Keefe said in a statement.

KFC and Draftfcb are using banner ads and the main KFC.com Web site to drive traffic to UnthinkKFC.com. KFC also promoted the UNFry Day giveaway on a page of the main Fox Broadcasting Web site.

The same page also offers visitors a chance to enter a “Kentucky Grilled Getaway Sweepstakes” in a promotion sponsored by Fox Broadcasting. Until May 31, participants can enter online or via e-mail to win a grand prize of a trip for two to Costa Rica.

In announcing the sampling event on April 14, KFC president Roger Eaton called the introduction of a grilled product line “a defining moment in our brand’s storied history.” However, KFC has attempted to introduce non-fried chicken to its national menus at least three times over the last 20 years, without notable success.

Whether or not this effort succeeds, some of KFC’s rivals among quick-service chicken chains are jumping on both its taste claims and its tactics for promoting grilled chicken. Costa Mesa CA-based El Pollo Loco last week challenged KFC to a grilled taste test, maintaining that its flame-grilled product tastes better than KFC’s, which is marinated and then oven-cooked without an open flame.

On Sunday, the day before KFC’s UNFry-Day, El Pollo Loco CEO Steve Carley appeared in a broadcast commercial issuing a “Taste the Fire” challenge to KFC, daring the company to contact him at a designated hotline number, 877-EPL-STEVE.

Carley also said the chain, located primarily in the Southwest and California, will make its own free food offer on April 28. Until 8 p.m. local time, El Pollo Loco will give two free pieces of its grilled chicken, along with salsa and two tortillas, to customers who ask to “taste the fire.” The offer is also being promoted on the company Web site and on its Twitter page.