A misplaced man meets a hen within the woods. Transfixed by the fowl’s spell, he follows a bunch of mysterious strangers, who reverently carry an enormous, golden egg to the shore of a lake.
There, in a lake of gravy, he’s baptized. When he emerges, he’s reworked into a bit of fried hen.
That is the cult of KFC, the place the members worship gravy and consider in just one factor: hen.
The weird advert inviting folks into the model’s cult would possibly cut up opinions—however that’s the purpose.
“We’re being polarizing, as a result of we would like dialog,” mentioned Martin Rose, govt inventive director of Mom London, the company behind the advert. “Primarily, we’re creating our personal cult of fandom.”
KFC’s industrial, “All Hail Gravy,” is an element two of its “Believe” campaign for the U.Ok. market. The newest spot ups the ante on the cultish imagery and absurdist humor to achieve Gen Z amid the more and more aggressive fast-food hen wars.
The model’s purpose is to “deliver an entertaining antidote to this boring, chaotic world,” mentioned Monica Silic, chief advertising and marketing officer of KFC U.Ok. and Eire. “That is about inspiring the fandom. We’re clear on having a task in tradition, which is to deliver some lightness and levity to the chaotic world by way of the reality of our product.”
Chapter certainly one of “Consider,” which debuted in June 2024, was set in a dystopian metropolis, the place a horde of zombie-like residents adopted a hypnotic beat and danced round their new deity: an enormous hen.
The advert tapped into the “temper of the nation that we’re residing on this mad world. You hear it in feast conversations, folks asking: ‘what are you able to even consider in anymore?’” mentioned Silic.
KFC’s facetious reply: chances are you’ll not be capable of belief in a lot, however you’ll be able to consider in hen.
With its unusual, cultish premise, the marketing campaign “demonstrates our personal obsession with our fried hen and model, in essentially the most entertaining approach,” Silic mentioned. Plus, she added, KFC’s founder Colonel Sanders was like “the unique cult chief” together with his distinctive look and mission to deliver fried hen to the world.
