Who can we turn to for stability in a time of political and economic uncertainty and AI’s imminent takes over of the world? We can ‘believe in chicken’, KFC says… in a booty shaking animatronic chicken. That’s the premise of its bizarre and darkly comic new ad, and it’s going down a storm.
In a bold change of direction, the brand put to one side its famous ‘finger lickin’ good’ slogan in favour of an ad that mixes dark social commentary on AI and political apathy with a banging soundtrack and surreal humour. It’s fused the atmosphere of a post-apocalyptic thriller, Stranger Things and Black Mirror to give us an update of Michael Jackon’s Thriller for the AI age. And it’s absolutely genius.
KFC itself has a difficult relationship with AI. Just a month ago, it was trying to get people to share AI-generated images of KFC products. AI image generators sometimes tend to produce hands with too many fingers, and that means more finger lickin’, the brand reasoned. But the campaign failed spectacularly when barely anyone took part, demonstrating that organic marketing really has to be organic.
So it seems it’s now had enough of AI and is championing fried chicken as the only thing that’s real any more in an increasingly artificial, screen-based, mediatised world. Devised by Mother and directed by Vedran Rupic, the ingenious spot is surprisingly dark (especially when you consider that the chicken being worshipped by hordes of fastfood junkie zombies is probably going to be nuggetted and deep fried). But it’s so bonkers that it’s impossible not to admire the brand’s boldness for going with it.
Showing a chicken in any form other than as a cartoon character is itself a bold move for a fried chicken brand, although KFC has form here with its Whole Chicken ad, which sparked a lot of complaints a few years ago (see above). Commenting on current affairs is even bolder, and it tends to go terribly wrong (remember that Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner?). Mother managed to get just the right tone and the right level of weirdness to not only make it work, but probably win KFC cult status for this piece.
Vedran said he had a “really good feeling about this campaign” from the start. He said: “It’s bold, clear and simple. The viewer should feel like they wanna move after seeing this. And if not, they should be: literally just vibing. To me, this was one of those inside-out ideas, where I’m never solving narrative problems, or patching ideas together. The core idea coupled with a big musical component meant I had everything I needed to make it interesting. This is the type of job in one’s life that has one thinking: Why am I not only doing jobs like this?”
Mother’s Executive Creative Director Martin Rose commented: “Believe in Chicken isn’t just a tagline; it embodies the sentiment shared by everyone who touches KFC. Having one simple truth at the core of what you do makes you really powerful. You get to stand up and stand out. While our competitors may dabble in chicken (we have no beef with that), we’re simply restoring chicken to its rightful place, the top.”
