And really, what creates "buzz" better than some kind of riot, or stampede? Or people running screaming away from fires? That's the lesson we've learned from these fine examples:

So you need to create some instant excitement for your company, or product. You need to shake things up. You need to create buzz.

5 Oprah Gives Away Free Chicken

KFC (now having officially dropped its slave name "Kentucky Fried Chicken") decided in May of 2009 to promote its new grilled chicken by giving it away for free. Wanting to keep their promotion subtle and discreet, they did the announcement on the show of a little-known entertainer named Oprah Winfrey.

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What Went Wrong

With a hilariously tragic lack of foresight, KFC underestimated both the all-encompassing influence of Oprah and the subtle racism of using a black spokeswoman to sell chicken. They apparently didn't realize the Mighty O reigns over the kind of media empire previously only seen under the thumb of Richard Dawson in The Running Man, so when she told viewers they could print out a voucher for free lunch at KFC on the May 5th episode of her talk show, America shit a rainbow so large it could be seen from space.

Approximately 16 million people printed out the Winfrey-approved coupon and showed up at KFCs nationwide to pry their free chicken from Colonel Sanders's cold dead fingers. The fast food chain was overwhelmingly unprepared and ran out of product before lunchtime (evidently their market research suggested that the average citizen doesn't like chicken and hates not having to pay for things).

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Angry customers in New York, outraged that their demands to complain to Sanders directly were dismissed as both "impossible" and "moronic," responded by starting mini-riots and sit-ins. Managers at some locations maneuvered around the debacle by telling customers they couldn't accept any coupons ending with the serial numbers "1234," which incidentally consisted of every PDF copy of the coupon in existence.

KFC also hilariously included the arbitrary restriction that the coupons couldn't be used on Mother's Day, which makes us think their CEO is in some kind of wacky Major League situation where somehow he makes a fortune only if he ruins the franchise.

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The Backlash

Rival chain, El Pollo Loco, officially turned KFC's grilled chicken clusterfuck into tender-roasted lovemaking when they announced that they'd accept all six million rejected KFC coupons that coming Sunday (which just happened to be Mother's Day).



Coma bolas, hombre sexos pollos!

KFC President Roger Eaton tried to wipe some of the egg off his face (pun completely intended because we're talking about chicken) by issuing a public statement, but the damage had been done--his company sunk a fuck ton of money into Oprah only to have their customers scooped up by a rival chicken shack. Generally, this is not part of a good business model.