STUART: Oh, how I hated the Colonel! With his wee beady eyes, and that smug look on his face. ‘Oh, you’re gonna buy my chicken!’

CHARLIE: Dad how can you hate the Colonel?

STUART: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, smart-ass!

                  (Mike Myers gives himself a lesson in "So I Married An Axe Murderer")

And Stuart might be right, "Kentucky Fried Chicken Recipe" tops the chain-restaurant recipe searches, everybody trying to figure out what that addictive chemical is. (This is rather amusing to native Kentuckians, as the Colonel’s chicken couldn’t hold a candle to Mom’s – but we will drop into KFC when we’re late for a potluck, anyway.)

As for the rest of the top ten, well, there’s only five others restaurants on it. Maybe all those restaurateurs out there are underestimating the public’s desire for variety. (Hush your mouth! says Mama. Everywhere you go already’s got the same menu as the place ya went last Sunday.)

Anyway, here are the top 10 restaurant recipe searches, according to Yahoo:

1.    Kentucky Fried Chicken Recipe
2.    Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce Recipe
3.    Red Lobster Shrimp Scampi Recipe
4.    Wendy’s Chili Recipe
5.    KFC Coleslaw Recipe
6.    Cracker Barrel Recipes
7.    Starbucks Recipes
8.    Olive Garden Minestrone Soup Recipe
9.    Olive Garden Chicken Marsala Recipe
10.    Red Lobster Recipes

KFC stated, "I’m just one person doing both of my shows. Podchick I started myself back in 2005 and SkyDiverGirls, a video podcast in 2006. I’m a one woman show. I do everything, but everybody knows who I am.

How is that? I don’t have a staff. I don’t have a budget. It’s because I am an insane guerrilla marketer! I have stickers, I have lighters. I send my name out to everyone on the Internet. There are all kinds of ways to get your name out there and not spend a lot of money."

KFC’s five steps of guerrilla marketing are:

1. Knowing your audience. Target your marketing to your audience gets you a bigger bang for your buck.

2. Living your brand. Always have your brand on your mind. Always thinking about what your brand has to offer. Always having your brand available for people to see and enquire about.

3. Social Networking. Who do you know? You know lots of people, not just people from this industry. What about what high school you went to? They might be interested in your show and what you are doing now. There are lots of ways to tap into resources that you have that most people don’t even think about. Of course, online social networking, your myspaces, twitters and all of these sorts of things.

4. Having a lot of energy. You have to have a lot of energy. I you’re sitting back at your house twiddling your thumbs it’s just not going to happen. You’ve got to get out there and be involved in things!

5. Have a positive attitude. I think having a positive attitude goes a long way toward marketing your brand. If your fun to work with then they are going to call you up when other opportunities come around. It’s a little longer sales cycle but it’s worth it!

>>> Watch the full video interview here <<<

It’s supposed to be this great answer to all that ails PR and ways to fix it. It’s great that there’s all this talk about the 25 percent … what about the 75 percent that is still screwed up?

What do I mean? Well, let’s take a look back at recent events: Tello versus Arrington; Alaska Airlines versus Jeremy Hermanns; Six Apart versus anyone that dares criticize them; Everyone versus Kryptonite. There are tons of examples, but these popped into my head.

Well, what’s so important about these? Well, it shows that blogging is not that elusive 25 percent, but that we need to worry about the other 75 percent, such as “who is an official spokesperson” for a company. I like Six Apart, for the most part. They seem like a nice company, blah blah. But, after Anil came to my blog, I called them up for a simple question … is he an official spokesperson? After a lot of avoiding the question – Apple PR people rock – and talking about what the future might hold for me and for PR and for blogging, I finally got an answer. No, not an official spokesperson.

And, that’s the issue – the old 75 percent of PR is where we craft messages, and in a crisis everyone sticks to that message. Is that such a bad thing? No, because PR can be transparent and honest about a crisis, and that’s what you are looking for. What is a PR person if they don’t have the balls to cut off a reporter, and their OWN spokesperson? Useless – and in this new era of PR, do we need those types of PR people?

That leads me to ask – well, what is PR to do with that 75 percent that we are used to working on, if we have problems with people commenting for the company. That’s where PR comes in (to help craft messages), and where a blogging policy comes in. Were those comments from Alaska Airlines? Were those comments from Tello employees or its PR firm? I don’t know – but the IP addresses (while they can be spoofed) usually don’t lie. And, well, it’s not just blogs we need to worry about – it’s message boards, where I am working on a fire for a client because, well, engineers like to talk.

The Schedule – Originally uploaded by philgomes.

But, there is that whole issue with the 25 percent. Do you remember that Gawker story on that poor PR person?

What happened there? By no fault of his own, Brandon became the story. He stupidly – yes, stupidly – pitched Gawker on a story for KFC. First, Gawker always seemed more ghetto than KFC to me. It’s more a Popeye’s type publication (best biscuits, btw and I am ghetto fab). And, second, read the freakin’ blog. Gawker is like Page Six without the Murdoch cash. Would you pitch KFC to Page Six? Not unless there was a good tie-in to Lindsay Lohan.

That’s why my personal hero right now is Phil Gomes. While others are talking about the 25 percent for personal gratification and to pretend to be leaders – notice the Wiki has died already – Phil is out on tour for Edelman speaking about the 25 percent. Kudos to Gomes, because he gets it (as his tour pic shows).

And, that’s why this news is news – I know that I am not going to affect change sitting in Phoenix, but need to be in the trenches and the foxholes in San Francisco at a large firm. I hope to help them not make such mistakes, be their Phil Gomes. And, btw, this is the only time you’ll see me blog about them.

But, the story isn’t about me, and shouldn’t be about me. It’s about the most important PR lesson, that seems to be forgotten in the era of PR bloggers … the story is about the client, not the PR person. Some of us are forgetting that, hoping to keep our A-list (no, not me, because I just don’t care) and looking for free invites to conferences and pimping for speaking opportunities. It’s not about us – the best PR people I have ever worked with knew that. They were never the story, even when they were the spokesperson. It’s about the client.

That’s a lesson we should all remember.

Jeremy Pepper is the CEO and founder of POP! Public Relations, a public relations firm based in Arizona, USA.

He authors the popular Musings from POP! Public Relations blog which offers Jeremy’s opinions and views – on public relations, publicity and other things.

I’m pleased to note I’m one of the 65 volunteers selected to post and comment throughout the two-day Web event on Monday, August 8 and Tuesday, August 9.

My posts will NOT focus on blogs. Heath Row, Fast Company’s Editorial and Community Director, asks “please try not to blog about blogging, per se. Enough people do that already.” Posts will tie back to Fast Company’s core themes-business, leadership, innovation, and change.

BlogJam 2004 was a blast. My posts from the 2004 event included a metric-focused piece entitled, Marketing with Both Sides of the Brain and a lightly theoretical post on Martha Stewart & KFC that, a year later, turned out to be dead wrong.

Be sure to stop by FC Now during next week’s festivities and join the conversation. The number of contributors has nearly tripled for this year’s event so there should be plenty of interesting content.

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Kevin Dugan is the author of the popular Strategic Public Relations blog. Kevin is Director of Marketing Communications for FRCH Design Worldwide.

Visit Kevin’s blog: Strategic Public Relations.