KFC apologises after German Kristallnacht promotion | Hacker News Reader

KFC apologises after German Kristallnacht promotion

bbc.com

22 pointsdmarchand9016 comments

"In a statement issued to Newsweek magazine, KFC Germany blamed the message on a bot."

Blaming a bot is always a cop-out. It should be blamed on whoever made the decision to deploy a bot in the first place.

Or, a notification doesn't matter and blame is pointless.

This is what happens when the people responsible don't have basic cultural competence. Or possibly poorly written code. Or more likely poorly defined requirements handed from product management.

There are holidays where it is appropriate to advertise food sales. And there are days of commemoration of tragedies where you just may be in mourning.

According to the article it was:

> The fast food chain said the "automated push notification" was "linked to calendars that include national observances".

Anyone with the slightest bit of foresight could have told you this was a completely idiotic idea to start with. Many countries have observances linked to deaths and tragedies.

I guess KFC should be lucky they didn't advertise fried chicken on MLK day.

> I guess KFC should be lucky they didn't advertise fried chicken on MLK day.

There was the 2020 Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago gaff which included references to BML. KFC's statement ends with "we are reviewing the approval process of all our communications to avoid situations like this reoccurring," which apparently did not work.

https://sentientmedia.org/kfc-black-power-drumstick/

Probably some automated script.

"It's $typeofobservance day for $holiday! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!"

The increase in antisemitism is the news is intriguing.

Wow, I thought this had to be a joke, but how the heck does someone screw something up so badly?

Probably just a list of "holidays" in a database without context.

> Wow, I thought this had to be a joke, but how the heck does someone screw something up so badly?

Inadequate testing. In hindsight, they should have generated all the messages for a year, for every country, and then sent them to their marketing teams for each country for review.

I wonder if they did this, and the person tasked with checking them just half-assed it and said "Yeah yeah, the list looks fine". Or if they didn't get enough education to know that this night is not a night for celebrating.

Case of poor automation practices gone awry.

I'm sure a bit of machine learning and blockchain could have saved them from the gaffe. Or, you know, know what you do.

Anything but involving a human in the process!

Carbon-based processing is highly overrated!

Today I left McD's after a droid was going to take my order and now KFC does this.

Wow. If I was running KFC, my next move would be to conspicuously violate employment laws (fair notice, accumulated vacation pay, etc.) in canning the responsible idiots. Let them sue for their rights, with the press watching.

(Yeah, figuring out which of the scurrying finger-pointers and ass-coverers are actually responsible is usually a non-trivial problem.)

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