Can the colonel save an ailing brand?

A KFC restaurant in Burbank, California. Photo: Fred Prouser

A KFC restaurant in Burbank, California. Photo: Fred Prouser

Published May 25, 2015

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London - He might have been buried in 1980 having reached 90 years of age, but that doesn't mean Colonel Harland Sanders can't still sell fried chicken. At least that's the hope of the people running Yum! Brands.

Earlier this week the world's largest restaurant company (owner of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and WingStreet) revealed that it has hired a comedian called Darrell Hammond, best known for playing Bill Clinton on Saturday Night Live, to perform as the late colonel in a series of adverts scheduled to run on American television from Monday.

It won't be the first time the company has used Colonel Sanders in ads since he died, but it is the first time it has used an actor to play him. A source close to the company revealed that KFC will also re-introduce the “finger lickin' good” phrase as part of a global rebranding exercise.

The ads, created by the New York agency Wieden + Kennedy, are part of KFC's 75th anniversary but also an attempt to regain domestic market share. In an unusually honest move, the ads also allude to the fact that KFC is not the ubiquitous American fried-chicken brand that it once was. In the one minute spot, Hammond drawls: “What you don't always seem to have these days is my Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Trying humility rather than hubris is a novel concept in advertising.

Brand needs a boost

According to the industry bible Advertising Week, the ads are also notable for “the concerted oddness of the execution... clearly meant to drag the colonel into the modern age without completely sacrificing his legacy”.

So is it a first sign of revival or a last act of desperation? That KFC needs a boost in its home market is not open to debate, particularly as sales in China, where it generates about half of group profits, slumped 11 percent in the last quarter due to revelations that it was using “rotten and expired” chicken.

An influential hedge fund, Third Point, has increased its stake in the company and a challenge to force the demerger of Chinese operations is likely to come sooner rather than later. The Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley believes that if broken up, the company will be worth around $110 (£70) a share - a 16 percent premium to its current market value. KFC desperately needs a hit if it is going to keep its critics at bay.

Reviving retro advertising is very much in vogue in the US, at least in fast food. Just two weeks ago McDonald's, another struggling giant, announced the revival of the “Hamburglar” character (in slightly creepy human hipster form), a staple of its marketing campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s. Meanwhile, Burger King paid a reported $1m to allow its even creepier “king” to be part of Floyd Mayweather's entourage at his fight with Manny Pacquiao earlier this month.

In resurrecting Colonel Sanders, it appears to some industry observers that KFC has decided that the best way to compete with younger competition is to go back to what made it in the first place - in other words, to almost stop competing. KFC's attempts to modernise its menu and launch trendier dining concepts have been far more notable for failures than successes.

Pip Pullen, president at the Louisville-based branding agency Mightily, says KFC's new campaign is “a little disturbing, unsettling even. Rather than just reanimating the colonel's cartoon corpse, they've given him a weird, eccentric, edgy quality. That might upset the sensibilities of conventional consumers, but brand managers know that style appeals to millennials. After all, Hollywood hasn't done much more than revive old ideas with great commercial success for the last decade, so why not brands?”

Advertising brand revivals are not uncommon but are rarely as successful. A single line, like Cadbury's “do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?”, tends to have more impact second time around than a person or a character more closely associated with their original time.

Colonel’s image prevails

What may give KFC an edge on other brands contemplating bringing mascots back from the dead is that despite being deceased, Colonel Sanders never actually left KFC. His image, complete with signature cream suit and Western string bow tie, still appears on buckets of chicken and on store signage. So while he may have been an old (and consciously untrendy) man by the time KFC became an international brand, he has remained the face of the business and is instantly recognisable, even to younger American consumers.

At least KFC has had the good sense to find an actor who, with the help of a lot of make-up, bears a pretty convincing likeness to the real Colonel Sanders. Back in 2007 an American popcorn called Orville Redenbacher's attempted to resurrect its eponymous founder by using crude computer-generated imagery to superimpose his face on to an actor's. The result was one of the most disturbing commercials ever made.

Whether an actor playing Colonel Sanders can bring punters back to KFC is still to be seen, but at the very least the company should be applauded for refusing to go quietly. However, funky adverts aren't going to win the food battle on their own. KFC's menu is what's making customers go to Chick-fil-A or Shake Shack, and no amount of folksy wisdom from someone who died 35 years ago is going to change that.

The Independent

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