MODENA — Fried chicken is forever. And no, this isn’t about digestion, but about the newest frontier in commerce, which happens to coincide with the oldest one: barter.

Get our logo tattooed on yourself, and we’ll supply you with fried chicken for the rest of your life (the life of the person eating it, obviously, not the chicken’s). Incredible but true.

It’s happening in Modena, where one might otherwise expect a more “local” kind of exchange — say, a tattoo in return for tortellini — and specifically at Modena Nerd, the tenth edition of a hugely popular annual festival devoted to comics, video games, cosplay and pop culture in general. Last year it attracted 28,000 visitors.

And, in particular, it’s happening around the world’s most famous chicken: the one bearing the Kentucky Fried Chicken brand, the second-largest restaurant chain in the world after McDonald’s, with 30,000 locations in 150 countries. The company’s logo even features a portrait of its founder, “Colonel” Harland David Sanders (1890–1980), the man who turned fried chicken into a global business.

During the two days of Modena Nerd this past weekend, anyone who had a KFC logo tattooed somewhere on their body — regardless of the location — received in return the chance to eat fried chicken for life, via a special coupon good for one meal every ten days. There was, however, an important restriction: the offer applies only to those residing in the Modena, Reggio and Parma areas.

The initiative was a spectacular success. According to the Gazzetta di Modena, around a hundred people took part on Saturday, with roughly the same number turning out the next day.

In fact, there were more people wanting tattoos than the tattoo artists on hand could handle. Three young men — in love with fried chicken, tattoos, or both — even slept in sleeping bags outside the fairgrounds to be sure of getting a slot. By 10:30 on Saturday morning, every appointment was booked.

Of course, given the economic crisis, stagnant wages, unemployment, the rising cost of living and everything else, the idea of a guaranteed meal for life — even if it’s chicken, always chicken, nothing but chicken — has a certain frugal appeal.

In other words, when artificial intelligence has eliminated your job, you’ll be fried, but at least you’ll still have fried chicken.

The company points out that it isn’t simply the prospect of eating for free for life that draws people in — it’s also straightforward brand loyalty. They cite, for example, a couple from Verona who already got the tattoo last year (this is the second edition of the chicken-for-tattoo exchange) and wanted to get tattooed again this year. Since they live outside the sacred borders of the former duchies of Modena and Parma, though, they have to pay for their KFC whenever they want it.

Naturally, as always in Italy, there’s been no shortage of controversy.

Federconsumatori, the consumer protection organization, thundered against “this unfair exchange between fried chicken and advertising tattoos” and called on the city authorities and the local health authority to verify compliance with health and hygiene regulations — for the tattoos, not the chickens.

The city government confirmed that the specialists on hand met all the requirements set out in the municipal regulations governing “hairdressing, beauty treatments, tattooing and piercing.”

So anyone who decides to put the logo on their skin has all the necessary guarantees. In other words, these aren’t the usual unlucky souls who fall victim to the catastrophic DIY tattoo artists you read about in the papers.

The idea does, however, raise other questions — both aesthetic and ethical.

Granted, tattoos have by now lost any stigma of disrepute. They’re no longer associated with the rough neighborhoods around the port of Marseille, or with prison cells. In fact, tattoos are popular among the people who are popular — though not with us aesthetically reactionary types — influencers, footballers, reality-TV personalities, porn stars, and so on. These days, it seems like practically everyone has one.

That said, frankly, getting yourself permanently branded with a commercial logo hardly seems like the height of good taste — especially one advertising a product that may well be delicious and wonderfully crispy, but is also, let’s face it, fairly cheap.

If you absolutely have to brand yourself, champagne or Ferrari would surely be a better choice — although I doubt either one would hand you a bottle, or a car, in exchange for a tattoo.

Then again, the ethical question is worth asking: how far gone is a consumer once they no longer just consume a product, but become its walking billboard, carrying it around on their own skin?

After all, Ernesto Calindri — the actor famous for a decades-long Italian ad campaign sipping the bitter aperitif Cynar amid traffic — never had an artichoke tattooed on his arm. Nor did Franco Cerri, star of a beloved Italian detergent commercial known as “the little man soaking in the washtub,” ever have a box of detergent tattooed on his body.

Just a reminder of an era when marketing — or, as it was then called, réclame (the old-fashioned French term once used in Italian for advertising) — was less invasive, and asked the public for nothing more than a smile, not their skin.