El Pollo Razonable

Proof that Twitter is an effective means of communication: Last night, while I was editing and posting about the latest natural disaster threatening to consume the town I live in, I had KEYT on. Since yesterday afternoon, this Santa Barbara-based TV station has been broadcasting news on the matter almost constantly, with only the occasional break for comercials. As a result, I saw a lot of the same ads over and over, and included among these was an especially unfortunate one for El Pollo Loco that encouraged me and everyone else glued to KEYT to “taste the fire.” Though anyone in North County probably didn’t bat an eye, it was clearly neither an appropriate nor effective ad campaign as Jesusita rages on here in the South County — and perhaps all the more so because the only El Pollo Loco I know of has almost certainly been evacuated.

When work was done around 1:30 a.m., I seized upon the matter in the way any tech dork would have: I tweeted about it.

Just now, I finally had enough free time to check my Twitter account, and lo and behold my stupid little tweet actually elicited a response — and from El Pollo Loco’s official Twitter account no less.

This is big for two reasons: For one, El Pollo Loco has a Twitter account. Who knew? And for the other, the tweet informed me that the company actually pulled the ad from KEYT.

Of course, I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who complained about it and I’m not taking credit for the fact that it’s no longer encouraging victims to let the Jesusita Fire scorch their tongues. But still — I’m pretty damn impressed that I even got a response much less one indicating that anything had been done about the matter.

Take that, Maureen Dowd.