Hasta La Creative!

And speaking of KFC, Yum Brands just launched a review of the fast food brand’s $220 million media business. WPP’s MEC has handled media duties for the brand for over a decade but opted not to participate in the review. According to Kantar Media, the brand spent around $55 million on measured media during the first quarter of 2016, down from $56.5 million over the same period last year. 

“The search seeks to identify and select a world-class agency capable of deploying innovative media strategies while leveraging cost efficiencies and maximizing return on investment,” the brand said in a statement. 

The review is being handled by Los Angeles consultancy Select Resources International. MEC has so yet to respond to a request to comment on the news, but the WPP shop has seen recent changes in several of its biggest accounts including AT&T, which recently consolidated its $2 billion account with Omnicom by picking BBDO for creative and the recently launched Hearts & Science for media duties.

KFC left former creative agency FCB for W+K back in February of 2015, following a closed review, with W+K subsequently launching a campaign featuring a revolving door of comedians/actors portraying Colonel Sanders, including Darrell Hammond, Norm MacDonald, Jim Gaffigan, George Hamilton and, currently, Rob Riggle. 

We’ve seen several Colonel Sanders incarnations over the past year, but while most have been about finger lickin,’ this one’s focused on ass kickin.’

At this weekend’s WWE’s SummerSlam (which has become a veritable brand bonanza), the professional wrestling organization unveiled its ad partnership with sponsor KFC. The resulting video, which you can watch below, will run as an ad on WWE Network throughout the rest of the year and into 2017.

While previous Sanders iterations have been played by comedy icons like Norm Macdonald, Darrell Hammond and Jim Gaffigan, this time around the part went to WWE star Dolph Ziggler, who faces off against the feathered nemesis played by fellow wrestler The Miz.

Who will survive, and what will be left of them? Let’s find out:

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April Fools’ Day was a month ago, but KFC is only just now announcing that it has made two edible nail polishes that bring the classic tagline, “Finger Lickin’ Good,” grossly to life.

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Whether or not KFC’s resurrection of Colonel Sanders achieves its goal of putting a sales dent in potent rivals like Chick-fil-A, the campaign is at least reminding America what a peculiar and fascinating life Harland Sanders actually led. 

As part of the campaign led by Wieden + Kennedy, KFC has launched a digital version of an animatronic museum called The Hall of Colonels, where robotic simulacra of Sanders will regale you with songs and stories about his life.

It’s surprisingly entertaining and educational, actually. Here are a few of our favorite gleanings:

1. He shot someone who vandalized his ad.

During his time as a Shell gas station owner in the late 1920s, Sanders got into an increasingly tense rivalry with a competitor, and the whole thing escalated into a shootout. 

When Sanders posted an ad next to a highway near his Corbin, Kentucky, business, rival service station owner Matt Stewart painted over the sign. Sanders threatened retaliation, but Stewart vandalized the sign again, just as Sanders was meeting with two Shell representatives.

The three grabbed firearms and went down to confront Stewart, who promptly shot and killed one of the Shell reps. Sanders shot Stewart in the shoulder, ending the firefight. Stewart went to prison, and Sanders avoided jail time after his rival was determined to have instigated the fight.

2. He learned to cook after his father’s early death.

At age 6, Sanders lost his father and had to learn to cook to help feed his rural Indiana family. The boy dropped out of school in the sixth grade (“because I didn’t like math”). He worked odd jobs in his youth, such as being a farmhand for $2 a month, and then, as a 16-year-old in 1906, lied about his age to join the Army. Despite his enjoyment of cooking, it would be another 24 years before he would start serving food for money.

3. He worked some truly odd and occasionally terrible jobs.

Here’s a sample (though admittedly we had to pull some details from other Google-able sources):

• Mule minder for the U.S. Army at age 16
• Lawyer, briefly, until he got in a courtroom brawl
• Ash pan cleaner for the Northern Alabama Railroad
• Michelin tire salesman (from which he was fired for his temper)
• “Helpful but technically unlicensed” obstetrician, delivering babies with rudimentary supplies like lard and Vaseline
• Owner of a ferry boat called the Froman M. Coots, which replaced an even more awesomely named ferry, The Old Asthma
• Founder of an acetylene lamp business, launched with his ferry boat profits. It failed due to the development of an affordable electric lamp.

4. He “didn’t want to be the richest man in the cemetery.”

Before his death in 1980, Sanders created the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization to donate much of his wealth to charities, schools and hospitals.

Learn more for yourself from the Hall of Colonels microsite. Or if you’re feeling abundantly curious, you could always check out his 1974 autobiography, “Life As I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin’ Good.”

Ogilvy Shanghai has a new campaign for KFC leveraging the popularity of Korean boy band EXO.

A new broadcast promotes the agency’s re-thinking of the toy meal giveaway, as QR codes on EXO figurines given away with KFC’s new Korean meals unlock a mobile 3D dancing game featuring the band, as well as offering users bonuses like virtual selfie shots with the band, Wechat GIFS and more. The spot itself is pretty hard to follow, thanks to some questionable translation leading to such gems as “should be seen on a committee satellite into a deep,” “highlights like gonna die soon yeah” and “today’s esos enough time John online.”

At any rate, the campaign targets a slightly older crowd than typical toy giveaways — 16-24 fans of the band, according to a press release — and “marks a range of firsts for all parties involved,” according to Ogilvy & Mather Shanghai Vice President Henry Ho, who added, “We engage EXO enthusiasts with a fun mobile game, but ultimately, we keep the player’s attention by offering fresh, exciting activities and, ultimately, helping them interact with each other as well.”

Credits:

Creative:

Chief Creative Officer: Graham Fink

Creative Director/ Deputy Head of Digital: Sascha Engel

Group Creative Director: James Lee

Associate Creative Director: Marc Viola

Art Director: Li Wen, Da Lin

Copywriter: Terrace Liu

Digital Strategy: Simon Usifo/ Chelsea Zou

Account Supervisors:

Henry Ho/ Christopher Wu/ Yu Hong/ JC Wu/ Fiona Wu/ Mikki Li/ Junjun Ji

Social@Ogilvy:

Sonic Zhao/ Coolio Yang/ Winnie Wang/ Joy Ji/ Miya Kang/ Le Luo/ Qian Zhang/ Jin Feng

Because fried chicken is the greatest thing in the history of the world, and considering Japan is from the future, it’s surprising they got their first KFC only 30 years ago.

To celebrate that anniversary, the franchise is currently holding a contest on Facebook and Twitter with probably the most amazing prizes ever. OK, none of them are useful—but if you forget to lick your fingers, you’ll be fine when using these wackadoodle chicken-themed accoutrements.

KFC is known for doing odd stuff like this in the U.S., too, so we can’t say we’re surprised. 

Via the International Business Times. 

 
First prize is this insane-o keyboard with chicken pieces for keys and a little baby statue of the Colonel perched on the Escape key. 

 
You could also win this chicken-leg mouse that looks more like a sex toy than a useable piece of computer hardware. 

 
Speaking of weird crap that no one would ever plug into their USB port.

 
Probably the best prize of all, chicken earrings. Gorgeous.

Here we are in prom season again, and there's a delicious scent in the air. But this time it's not fragrant flowers. It's fried chicken. 

Enter KFC, which is encouraging prom-goers to adorn their wrists with fried chicken before heading to the big dance and twerking all up on each other, which I assume is what the kids are doing these days. 

You can actually order one for $20 (sorry, limit of 100). You get a lovely corsage for your date and a $5 gift card to go and buy the chicken yourself.

A note from the florist, Nanz and Kraft:

"Chicken not included (duh). Each corsage kit includes a $5 KFC gift check, so you can customize your corsage with Original Recipe, Extra Crispy or Kentucky Grilled Chicken. Whichever best matches her dress. Local corsages will have fresh baby's breath and out-of-town corsages will have silk baby's breath."

Take a look below at what will probably happen if you get this delicious bit of fast-food swag. 

Via Buzzfeed.

Yes, you read that correctly: Adult Swim is making the rounds with a gigantic black-and-pink blow-up castle filled with (sponsored) attractions like a KFC-branded rotating mirror-tunnel, an Ice Breakers cage in which participants are required to sing for their freedom and sundry other extremely weird attractions.

We saw this nonsense last summer at San Diego Comic Con, and it's a good time. I don't remember the Tippy Tunnel, but then again, I don't remember much about the experience generally, and have only a T-shirt to prove I was there. Yes, the T-shirts will be a feature of the revitalized Fun House, too.

From February to May, the castle will tour colleges around the U.S., notably U.C. Riverside, Texas A&M, Auburn and some others—10 schools over 12 weeks, in all.

It's an unorthodox ad buy, to put it mildly, but KFC and Hershey's (which makes Ice Breakers) are getting spots on the network as part of their sponsorship of the various dizzy-making attractions. Those spots will also promote awareness of the Fun House on air, beginning Feb. 24 on Adult Swim.

2013 was a great year for the network—it came in second among 18-34-year-old viewers in prime time (to sister net TBS), despite not actually airing between 8 and 9 p.m. That's set to change in March, and with new airtime coming up, it's important to make sure Adult Swim's core audience is aware of the new time schedule.

Not that they have to take advice from me, but they're going to want to get something really big to promote that. Something that catches the eye.

One of the best perks about writing for (or with) the advertising industry is that there is always enough news to regurgitate without beating a story into the pavement. Especially during these economic times when many companies find themselves struggling to stay in the black. There are new campaigns launched every week, agency shake-ups, ethical questions to answer-it’s like having a gold mine of RSS data-feeds loaded in the Google Reader. This morning, over 2000 stories had come in over RSS since yesterday.

The other fantastic reason to work in this business is the community that surrounds: creative, strategic, deep-thinking people that fuel the business with inane, often stupidly funny ideas. Immersed in client strategy and brand building, these ideas that seemed so idiotic during the creative kick-off meeting actually transform in to fantastic campaigns. The latest campaign that comes to mind is the Kentucky Fried Chicken  grilled chicken spots, replete with a new website, a social media following on Facebook (and the obligatory anti-group “Keep KFC Fried”), integrated games, and three new TV spots that engage consumers rather than talking at them.

But, there are also “best and brightest” ideas that start poorly and end with company damage and public relations stepping in to help stop the blood flow. The ideas were innovative and innocuous when they started, but resulted in offending consumers so quickly that public outcry was  immediately heard. This week the award goes to Apple’s iPhone App, Baby Shaker. The premise of this “game” was that the iPhone ”baby” cried and fussed loudly, not stopping until the iPhone user shook the phone vigorously.

Although not created by Apple, (the application was the brain-child of Sikalosoft) they are taking the heat for it due to the rigorous vetting process applications receive before approval. Parents aren’t the only offended parties; reviewers, other developers, and many consumers expressed their disgust on the web. The public has suggested that the employees who approved the application lose their jobs.

Application-review site Krapps wrote in a review before the app was pulled: “Maybe it’s just us, but we would never even joke about child abuse and use it as a form of entertainment. Maybe we’re just square pegs and out of the norm because apparently Apple and the folks at Sikalosoft think shaking a baby is funny.”

Neither Sikalosoft nor Apple responded to requests for comment.

 
Jeff Louis is a Strategic Media Planner, Project Manager, and New Business Coordinator. His passion is writing, contributing to BMA as well as freelancing. He’d love to hear from you: www.linkedin.com/in/jefflouis or on twitter.com/jlo0312

Ad Agency: Leo Burnett, Cairo, Egypt