Piping Hot Buckets of Greasy Fried Marketing

It wasn’t the usual collection of PETA Protesters and their stomach-turning illustrations of animal abuse that caught my eye while passing the neighborhood KFC this morning. The Colonel’s marketing elves must have visited overnight and trimmed the window-front in a bright display of pink buckets…apparently KFC and Susan G. Komen have teamed up to raise money and awareness to the fight against breast cancer.

I am all for brands joining for mutual benefit. I am all for supporting the fight against breast cancer. But doesn’t this partnership seem a little out of balance? I don’t know of any studies that show a line between eating fried chicken and getting breast cancer…but I do know that being healthy and eating a consistent diet of fast-food (especially fried food) don’t go hand in hand. Will the number of pink buckets (0.50 cents a pop) they sell offset the number of clogged arteries? Do you think the people from the American Heart Association are happy with this partnership?

My point, and the connection to law firm marketing, is that as marketers we have a responsibility to remain true to our company’s cause. In this case, KFC is remaining true to their job of selling buckets of fried chicken---someone who might have visited Burger King could be swayed to grab a pink bucket instead. But it seems that the marketers at Susan G. Komen are failing their community by raising money for one part of the body at the expense of another.

Law firms (and marketers) make similar mistakes when marketing things like diversity, women’s initiatives and alternative billing…I mean if it were as great as the ads make it out to be, there wouldn’t be a problem (see the March issue of The American Lawyer for a snapshot of Diversity at big firms).