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Posts Tagged ‘kfc’
KFC Reputation – Fined £19,000 for cockroach on premises
May 12, 2010 | 
Author As it is said, you’re only as strong as the weakest link! This is exactly what KFC is dealing with at its busy London West End branch in Leicester Square. Health inspectors found a cockroach eating a chip, flies and even a mouse! A £19,000 fine has been slapped on KFC following this serious hygene issue.
KFC admitted in court to all this and the newspapers are flashing photos of the cockroach on the chip for all to see.
The other charge admitted to was that there was no hand-wash facility for staff to wash hands at the food preparation area!!
BBC reports the KFC spokesman having said…
“The restaurant has undergone a complete renovation, and the environmental health officer’s barrister has told the District Judge that there is no longer a concern about these premises.”
Well, too little, too late this is, as is the £650,000 refurbishment done on the premises.
The retail food and chain restaurant businesses have set very high standards for themselves and that has contributed to their worldwide success. But being in such a sensitive industry it just takes a single branch to take your business reputation down.
From the study we did at Reputation Management For.com KFC has not fared well in reputation management and our KFC Reputation Ranking is a clear indicator to what the company can do to rectify this.
Posted in Bad Press, Company Reputation, Damage Limitation, Reputation Management, Reputation News | 
Tags: Cockroach, Fined, kfc, Leicester Square, Reputation Management | 
3 Comments »
Company and Brand Names need thinking through
Often in the passed before the revolution of the online world having a unique and memorable name wast often a good thing. How times have changed since the rise of the internet, or as it could be called nowadays the Customer Review Network. When deciding on a name you must consider the pros and cons. Having a unusual name makes it easier to do well in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), however the big downside to this of course is it makes it very easy for negative comments in forums, blogs and 3rd party sites to start appearing on the first page of Google.
Here is a great example of 2 very well known restaurant franchise companies KFC and MacDonald’s. If you google these two names you will notice two different outcomes the first 3 or 4 results for KFC are websites managed by KFC however most of the results below them are negative. Do the same for McDonald’s and you will only get positive results, why is that? The main reason is McDonald is of course a Scottish name and a very strong one, so there are many groups like the McDonald clans, families and other businesses all trying to get to the top of the SERPs for the search term Mcdonald. Not only that, McDonald Restaurants are also very proactive on the net and have 100′s of websites which smother the first few pages of the SERPs.
So if keeping you company name clean on the net is number one priority make sure you choose a name that is quite generic but not overly broad, so for example Car Garage Ltd would be to generic, but Chicago Car Garage maybe OK. Also make sure you check the user-name is available using tools like http://knowem.com/ If you do a search on the main social network sites, it could be enough to put you off using that name if they are not available on sites like Twitter.
Posted in Examples, Reputation Management, Reputation Online, SEO, Social Network Sites | Tags: brand names, checking usernames, kfc, mcdonalds, protecting, SERPs, Social Network Sites | No Comments »
Do the big companies understand online reputation
What’s amazing is how big companies still have no real understanding of reputation management on-line and how it effects them. Here are some examples.
KFC
The Google search shows kentuckyfriedcruelty.com these kinds of search results can effect not only business reputation with customers but also shareholders.
Apple’s Iphones
This result is number 4 in Google could certainly put people off buying the Iphones. The issue with negative results showing for your product is you never know how much it’s hurting and costing the comapny.
negative content results about iphones
Holiday Inn New York
Many hotels around the world suffer from sites like tripadvisor which normally have way more negative comments than positive ones.
Holiday Inn Hotel Reputation Online
So these are just a few quick examples of household brands who have not fully understood the need for managing the content on the first page results of search engines. It’s no easy task and requires commitment from the company as well as the online reputation company. Some industries naturally have a tougher job than others, take hotels for example, because of the nature of the industry they encourage 3 rd party websites to have content on them so they can make commission of bookings. These 3rd party sites learnt very early on that customer feedback creates lots of fresh original content. The problem created by this approach of course is more often than not people will write remarks when they have had a bad experience rather than a good one, so more often than not the content is normally negative rather than positive.
So how do you protect your brand and company reputation?
There is no quick solution to this, it’s really about creating good quality content and keeping on top of the social network sites. When we are creating content we put it into categories:
- Top quality – this content is written for the main website and any press releases.
- Middle quality – this content maybe out sourced and used for social net work sites and micro sites.
- Lesser quality – this is used to fill the Internet with positive stories and helps push and support the top quality content.
Although we offer SEO services much of our work is creating positive content for clients and managing the whole online presence. It is an ongoing battle making sure you keep on top of the online world, 1 or 2 articles a week just won’t do it if you have a global brand and you are going against 1000′s of people writing about you.