KFC drops Colonel from TV campaign

SINGAPORE: KFC has dropped the famous Colonel Sanders character from its television advertising in Singapore with the tagline of its latest commercial, 'Have you got the craving?', representing a major shift in the brand's strategic direction. Previous commercials used the line "Nobody does chicken like KFC" and featured the animated Colonel Sanders character discussing the product. But the new campaign, which its Singapore agency Ogilvy & Mather hopes will go regional, uses humorous slice-of-life advertising to endear the brand and make it relevant to consumers. One commercial shows people who appear to be on a crowded bus before the camera pans out to reveal they are just crowding around one man because he has a bucket of KFC chicken. But the commercial almost didn't make it - when the agency presented the storyboards, the client knocked back the idea and chose another commercial entitled 'Tai Chi'. "But we felt this ad was better so we took the initiative and paid to have the spot produced," said Craig Smith, O&M head of art. "Sometimes it's difficult to get clients to believe in what you're saying so you need to go further to help them out." Smith is pleased with the new positioning because it gives the agency greater scope to explore ideas for forthcoming campaigns. "More ideas will come to light and the advertising will be a lot more fun. The ideas are going to get better. We've won creative awards for small clients, but now we're going to do it properly by winning more awards for big clients," he said. According to David Mayo, O&M regional business director, the new advertising reflects the role KFC plays in everyday life. He said the tagline 'Have you got the craving?' was appropriate for KFC because it represented a powerful positioning that arch rival McDonald's could never claim for itself. Mayo added that dropping Colonel Sanders from television spots, but retaining the character for point-of-sale materials, made sense because "the Colonel is an icon of the brand but it isn't a creative idea".

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