The last couple of decades have been challenging for KFC, while the chicken business has been booming for its rival Chick-fil-A, which passed KFC as the No. 1 chicken chain in the U.S. To turn the business around, KFC tapped a man who knows something about rejuvenating old brands: Kevin Hochman is the P&G marketer who made Old Spice a cultural icon. And Hochman, who is now president of KFC USA, tuned to to the man who started it all: Colonel Sanders.
Sanders opened his first restaurant when he was 40, inside a Shell gas station which he owned and sold his first franchise at 62. This pioneer entrepreneur was followed by a trail of legends that seems almost too good to be true. He is said to have wounded a business rival in a dual, delivered babies, and also practiced law before hitting it big time in fast food. He swore like a sailor, and once, the story goes, he put a hex on a Japanese baseball team, after its joyous fans celebrated a championship by tossing Sanders’ statue, taken from a local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, into a river.
And, of course, he wasn’t a real Colonel. Sanders embraced the title and managed to look the part by growing facial hair and donning a white suit. He bleached his mustache and goatee in order to match his white hair to look better on B&W TV when he took to appear in ads for KFC.
"The decline started when the Colonel died," Kevin told me when I spoke with him last week at the ANA Masters conference, "KFC got away from its core values.” Hochman understood that Sanders was a marketing genius who created a persona, and he has set out to reclaim the brand cues that the Colonel established: the red striped bucket, the secret recipe, the phrase “Finger Lickin’ Good.”
And of course, most importantly, the Colonel himself, that irrepressible image of the Southern gentleman and proponent of good homestyle American cooking.
Darrell Hammond the former SNL comic was tapped to portray the Colonel in the advertising, almost 30 years after Sanders himself passed away.
The bold gambit created tremendous buzz. Three months later Hochman’s agency, Wieden+Kennedy, suggested replacing Hammond with Norm MacDonald. “I thought they are crazy,” he laughs, “I have an ad that’s catching on, we have traction, and they suggest a new actor.” But the agency explained that a squad of colonels will create conversations on social media and will keep people interested. This was totally in character with the zany salesmanship of Sanders himself, who would do anything to promote his chain and sell chicken.
And while the ads are fun they never mock Sanders. They are respectful of the founder and his devotion to selling fried chicken.
Thinking of the revived TV Sanders in terms of a squad rather than the traditional approach of using one actor, also meant that the idiosyncrasy of each portrayal will keep the campaign fresh. So, in the 30 months since the campaign launched KFC used no less than 10 Colonels – from Jim Gaffidan to Rob Riggle, to Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men’s Pete Campbell) to Ray Liotta to Rob Lowe (whose ad for the Zinger sandwich, was selected by me as one of the 10 best ads of the year).
Kevin smiled enigmatically and became uncharacteristically mum when I asked him if a woman Sanders or an African-American might be on the drawing board, but since he and the agency have their finger on the cultural pulse, expansion into non-traditional Colonels makes sense.
For now, every Sanders has to fit a particular idea, or promotion, or menu item. For example, take George Hamilton, the perpetually extra-tanned veteran actor who is a perfect match with the Extra Crispy chicken. " He was the only one under considerations. If we couldn't get Hamilton, we probably wouldn't have done this ad," Kevin told me.
Kevin did something that’s very tough to do in the generic restaurant sector – he rebuilt and elevated a brand. This was done by going back and by rediscovering proven brand equities, respecting them, and, most importantly, with differentiating advertising that goes beyond mundane food shots that so many restaurants retreat to.
KFC and the agency are also very good at extending the ideas and creating even more buzz this way. For example, they hired a real genre writer to produce a 96-page romance novella, set in Victorian England for Mother’s Day ( Titled “Tender Wings of Desire”), their best selling day of the year . The novel centers on Lady Madeline Parker, who "must choose between a life of order and a man of passion" — that man being Sanders, a "handsome sailor with a mysterious past," who is depicted on the cover carrying the beautiful Parker in his arms.
"This Mother's Day, let Colonel Sanders take care of dinner — and mom's fantasies by giving her Tender Wings of Desire," intones a shirtless heartthrob in an ad promoting the book.The novel was, actually, favorably reviewed by the prestigious Paris review.
In another example of a bold and outrageous idea, for the Extra Crispy spot that took place on the beach they came up with a SPF 30 sunscreen that smells like, you guess it, fried chicken.
In a world of health-food hype, the chain is doubling down on its fried-chicken bucket, that still gets about three-quarters of its sales from parents with kids at the table. However, consideration of this fried-food and biscuit delight seems to be catching on fast among Millennials too. "Many families see our bucket meals as home-meal replacements," Kevin says. And maybe that is the secret to its success. It’s on-trend as people look to slow down and for things that give them comfort.
Or maybe it's just that the food is delicious, and it combines it a little nostalgia for simpler time when the whole family would gather for dinner.
