Ruminations on a GOAT

Overwhelmed by the image of an enormous sandwich at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) shop in Paris à La Défense, I almost missed the health-wise admonition in small print (“pour votre santé, évitez de grignoter entre les repas“ — for your health, avoid snacking between meals).

What Signals Would a Monolingual Parisian Have Missed?

They would miss a lot of context, for sure. To its credit, KFC footnoted* “GOAT,“ expanding the four-letter acronym to “greatest of all time” and translating it into the local patois. But nearsighted monolingual Francophones using Google Translate might miss the asterisk and smaller font altogether, so Google Translate’s rendering of GOAT as “chèvre” might seem to be off-brand for a fried-chicken joint.

How frequently does this acronym occur in French? My search for other uses in French turned up two references, both translating it with a wink to English: 1) 2023 Columbia Sportswear’s literal translation of its “be the GOAT” slogan to “soyez la chèvre” in Canadian advertising amused some Québécois, but left others confused about the message; and 2) discussions in Langue Français on the use of “GOAT 🐐“ and its equivalent “TROP 🐐“ in French social media where the exaggerated ”TROP” (”too much”) takes that GOAT compliment over the top.

In both cases, translators, other linguists, and marketers opined as to the challenges of translating idioms, but several noted that the term would be meaningful to social media demographics such as sports fans, pop culture, and GenZ. Given Canada's shared professional sporting history with it overbearing Anglophone neighbor to the south, Columbia surely assumed there would be some familiarity with the concept. For its part, in addition to the social media cohort it could address, KFC’s location à La Défense is crawling with internet-savvy knowledge workers who might have a sense of what a GOAT is in the meme-ish sense of the word.

How Successful Was KFC's GOAT Gambit?

I would characterize the company's non-localization strategy as a thought-out, conscious personalization effort targeting a set of desirable demographics in France (“Design Language for Multimodal Experiences”). While the French media didn’t jump on this campaign, KFC’s sideways media strategy has worked before in dealing with complex business issues. In 2022, Gabe Green analyzed the company’s social media strategy in responding to complaints about its food quality. That successful campaign landed KFC on the front page of BBC News, and by the time his article was posted, “KFC have amassed 57.5 million followers on Facebook, 1.6 million on Instagram, 1.5 million on Twitter, and 150K on LinkedIn.”

After my visit in late March, KFC doubled-down on its chicken-centric cultural outreach with a new outdoor advertising campaign addressing the perception that KFC chicken tenders are industrial (en franglais, “les tenders“). The company’s marketing partner says that it is also reinventing outdoor advertising in the country to great effect on social media. Don’t be surprised to find “Coke au vin“ on the menu as KFC moves toward a more gender-diverse poultry menu.

Note: No Actual Goats Were Harmed in Making This Sandwich

The original GOAT was the boxer and social activist Muhammed Ali, who frequently declared himself “the greatest.“ His wife Lonnie incorporated "Greatest of All Time, Inc." in 1992. Rapper LL Cool J cemented the connection with his Ali-inspired “G.O.A.T“ album in 2000. Since then, the term has been widely overused by a variety of superstars in their respective domains, even to the point of finding multiple GOATs in the same fields. In 2023, Lake Superior State University pronounced it #1 on its 2023 list of banished words. GOAT is commonly written both with and without periods between the letters, which is unusual for acronyms like NASA, NATO, and UNICEF that are pronounced as words.

Photo: This photo was taken at the beginning of an early-spring trip to Europe for a presentation at Loc360° In Paris. Following that, planes, trains, and/or automobiles took me to Berlin, Rostock, Prague, and London for visits with friends, academic colleagues, and CSA Research clients.