KFC President Bullshits His Way Through Interview

Still clinging to the notion that fried chicken is good for you, KFC President Gregg Dedrick gives PR shoveled, canned answers in this USA Today interview. Responding to a question about the recent KFC commercial claiming fried chicken is healthy by comparing it to Burger King's Whopper, Dedrick sticks by the health claims.

Q: When you claimed in TV spots that fried chicken could be part of a healthy diet, consumer groups and the FTC came after you. And some consumers laughed. If you had it to do over again, would you air the ads?

A: The ads communicated facts that were very relevant to our consumers. It was surprising news. Customers reacted favorably. Our sales were up 1% (for the month of November.) It elicited a number of inquiries from our customer hotline.

And it validated what people had been doing already - the idea of peeling the skin back from the chicken breast. The idea that people can eat fried chicken and have less fat than a Whopper was relevant to our customers.

Q: But weren't you playing it fast and loose with the commercials? A tiny disclaimer at the bottom of the ad said that KFC chicken is not a low-fat, low-sodium, low-cholesterol food. You can't have it both ways.

A: We don't believe we were. We stated the facts as they exist. Our message was not intended to say that this was a health food - but that it's better for you than you think. The campaign was a set of commercials that run three to four weeks. It went off as planned.

Telling the truth would have made for a better interview.

Girl Scouts Go Hip (Or Hope To) With New Ad Campaign

With poster taglines like, "We want an adviser who knows 50 Cent isn't two quarters" and "Be more popular with teens than you ever were in high school," the San Francisco Girls Scouts hope to transform the image of girl scouting from hopelessly hokey to happenin' hip and attract women 18-29 to become troop leaders.

The campaign also hopes to make Girls Scouts cool for girls over 10, the age at which most girls drop out of scouts for fear of being labeled something less than cool.

American Culture Returns to Normal Flash Mob Fragmentation

This Time Magazine article likens the current fickle and flighty American culture to the recent meme of Flash Mobs, the sudden gathering of a crowd to perform some random act only to then suddenly disperse. Americans gather together only briefly now, as they always did pre-mass media. Normally, Americans live in their own very different worlds and came together as a mass culture only because no other option was available. Those options to return to a "tribe-like" life are now available in full force. The death of mass culture is a result of media fragmentation.

Media fragmentation has finally caught up with the cultural fragmentation that has always been the fabric of America. All Americans came from varied backgrounds, were drawn together for a brief moment by mass media, only to return the original stasis of mass differentiation. Mass culture was an oddity. Fragmentation is the norm.