Wednesday, April 14, 2010 at 4:14PM It's called food porn by some. Is KFC smart to sell it?
Close to what one might view as the antithesis of a vegan meal.
Yep, it had to come with one fast-food chain vying to out do the other...Where's the beef? Think outside the bun! What's next? Here's what's next: the KFC Double-Down Sandwich. Here are the specs:
No bun but instead two deep-fried chicken patties
2 Slices of cheese
2 Strips of bacon
All composed of...
540 Calories
32 Grams of fat
1380 Milligrams of sodium
Test marketed tested in Rhode Island and Nebraska, last year, here's the commercial that gets "the word" out about the KFC Double-Down sandwich...
This new talk-of-the-town menu item is clearly a boom for some KFC customers, but is it a big opportunity for KFC to cash in? The product clearly has an appeal to some but not all--and even with this limited clientele, heavy consumption will need to be moderated by good judgment, for a steady diet of the Double-Down could be cut-short by serious health consequences!
Make that two angina attacks to go, please.
To be honest, here's no appeal for me--I'm not in the target market--but just the same, I have doubts about this as a particularly promising sell-side strategy for KFC. Here's why: First, what's the marketplace "position" of the Double-Down sandwich? It doesn't get close--by a long shot--to any of the ideal mental places most peoples heads are at: not close to "healthy," not close to "green,"--it even violates a social sensitivity to what's proper. In a day and age where health, green, and social respectability are so "hot," it seems that KFC's made a conscious decision to move back into a neighborhood of positioning real estate that its competitors are falling all over themselves to flee.
Will KFC make money on the Double-Down? Probably. But, frankly, I think what they make will cost them more than they've calculated on the financial ledger. Let me explain: Obviously they're going to sell this item for more than the direct costs of the included ingredients--but then there's the much more weighty costs of the investments devoted to carve out awareness and familiarity and then preference for an item that flies in the face of the zeitgeist. This strategy amounts to the equivalence of trying to make cigarettes and booze seem fine in an age where both are seen to be less than desirable to consume with gusto.
Would you like that with fries or just an EMT?
Not everybody actually takes a healthy approach to living their daily lives--but I would argue that there is a vast majority who are, nonetheless, increasingly mindful of the adverse effects of products that are detrimental--even if they don't consistently follow all of their beliefs. Thus, to the degree that KFC is successful in winning over a special, dedicated clientele to seek out and consume health-harmful Double-Downs, it's swimming against the tide of ideal public preferences.
For all those who their marketing drives to KFC to order the Double-Down sandwich, even more will--as a direct result of exactly that kind of promotion--think of the chain as a place that is indifferent, at best, or down-right hostile to all of their best intentions to live-wise and eat healthy; and, in my view, that's a larger--and in the long run--more profitable crowd. KFC, in effect, is selling their image short for a few immediate dollars and squandering the possibility of they're feasibly being a destination for anyone else who really wants to do better for themselves than ordering stuff that leads to bad ends.
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Reader Comments (2)
I think the teen and twenty something group will be the market. Randy talked about this yesterday, he is ready for this type of "sandwich. He is not thinking health or long term.
This will surely keep the cardiac surgeons in great demand