Chicken-fried Bull

Slate's Rob Walker takes on the marketing mavens who devised KFC's new ad campaign, which suggests that fried chicken can be healthy for you. Agree or disagree with the medical merits of fried bird, Walker raises some interesting issues that all marketing execs should ask themselves. Basically, how do you position a product that at the end of the day may not move society forward? For Walker, the answer is clear: Sell it for what it is. "The problem isn't that the ad is misleading (since it's fooling no one); the problem is that it so badly misunderstands the point of fried chicken. Fried chicken, done well, is a worthwhile thing. Its decadence trumps the entire concept of the "healthy lifestyle" and makes dieting seem like a flawed, pointless exercise for tedious goody-goodies."