[Image: KFC / Youtube]
Somebody in KFC’s marketing department is either a genius or fired.
KFC recently unveiled a 90-second Believe in Chicken short film/advert featuring a city’s population overcome with something that makes people start to convulse like chickens. Eventually, they ended up dancing around a real bird, as if enslaved by some chicken cult.
It’s almost art but not quite, and way too strange to be anything other than a trailer for a new Netflix series. It’s also easily the weirdest commercial we’ve seen this year, but it does hold your attention, building up to the moment when “Believe in Chicken” is stamped across the screen.
Words don’t do it justice; see if you can figure this one out.
We barely had enough time to say “What the f…” when KFC laid another even weirder advert on us entitled Believe Part 2: All Hail Gravy.
The sequel nobody expected features an oke getting dipped into a river of gravy and emerging as a chicken wing. There’s also a massive golden egg being carried through the jungle to oversee the miracle.
Maybe there’s some hidden symbolism in transforming a human being into a drumstick and offering them up to a giant egg. Maybe not. Honestly, nobody has the faintest idea what’s going on here, but while the rest of us scratch our heads, the Christian Post has taken the safest route by accusing KFC of “promoting cultism and mocking baptism.”
Calling it “disgusting,” a “disgrace” and “beyond the pale,” some accused the ad of featuring and implying “many suspect attitudes, cultism, cannibalism, grooming[.]”
An official press release promoting the ad from KFC UKI (United Kingdom & Ireland) described it as “an odyssey through the mystical woodland.” It noted the large golden egg symbolized a “guiding light and provides the captivating beat for the choreographed procession of Believers, which is set to an original track.”
“The narrative builds to a climax, capturing the anticipation as one of the Believers is immersed in a pool of liquid gold gravy and emerges as a perfectly crispy KFC Mini Fillet above the shimmering gravy lake, to the cheers of the crowd.”
“The modern-day fable explores the strong connection KFC fans have with the Original Recipe Chicken and a true cult favorite: the freshly made gravy.”
Monica Silic, chief marketing officer of KFC UKI, said the campaign is an attempt to “bring an entertaining antidote to this dull, chaotic world,” according to Adweek. “This is about inspiring the fandom. We’re clear on having a role in culture, which is to bring some lightness and levity to the chaotic world through the truth of our product.”
We say leave the fandom to Apple nerds and quit with the Darren Aronofsky shit. Nobody asked KFC to hatch a new zeitgeist – just make the chicken.
[Source: The Grocer & Christian Post]
