Small independent restaurants were using KFC’s chicken images in their menus and storefront graphics, despite not actually selling KFC chicken.
They would download images from image searches, and reproduce them in low quality and low resolution. KFC gave a surprising response: they helped them.
KFC created a stock image library: ChickenStock. It featured beautifully-shot photos of KFC chicken – all free to download.
When an image was downloaded, the technology also revealed the neighborhood of the download. So KFC created an outdoor campaign in those neighborhoods. It informed all the local restaurant owners that they could download high-quality chicken images from ChickenStock. Also a reminder:
‘you can steal our images, but you can’t steal our taste’.
