KFC sets Chicken Dance record at Twenty20
Last night saw a fighting fit Australian line-up smash the England Twenty20 side in what can only be described as their best performance of the summer.
However, it wasn’t just the Aussie side that put in a strong performance. The MCG came alive as 26,000 people flapped their arms and shook their tail feathers to set a new world record for most people performing the ‘Chicken Dance’ at a sport stadium.
Thousands of fans flocked to the stadium to watch the Aussies and the Poms collide, and were only too keen to channel their inner chook and make sporting history of their own.
KFC was attempting to beat the world record of the biggest ever ‘Chicken Dance,’ currently held by a county fair in Canfield, Ohio, in 1996. This record saw 72,000 people involved.
While the rain kept the crowds at bay with audience figures just reaching 26,000 at 7.15pm before the game kicked off, KFC were unable to break the world record. Luckily, KFC managed to set a new world record for most people performing the ‘Chicken Dance’ at a sport stadium.
The URDB Official presented Natasha Zunic with the award at 7.20pm last night in front of a crowd of approximately 26,000 cricket fans at the MCG.
The event was a joint effort by KFC’s ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, Sydney, PR agency Pulse Communications and experiental agency Ensemble Australia.
22 Comments
Yawn
What a fantastic, fun idea. Well done to all those involved and make sure you’ve ironed your best shirt. I smell awards.
Can it get more embarrassing than this?
Let’s call it the humiliation strategy, when a brand acknowledges how unappealing, unappetising, unhealthy, and generally foul, not fowl tasting its product actually is, and makes the marketing decision to rally sympathy for itself by employing the lowest common denominator of humour and intelligence to advertise its product.
We’re imagining the briefing discussions around the conference table going something like this, “We know we sell absolute shit to a segment of the public too stupid and devoid of taste to care, so let’s pander to our target audience’s two digit IQs by acting like fools in public as well, then sit around and watch the cash flow in.”
Australia succumbs to the American way of eating. Crikey!
Cringe, cringe, cringe.
6.43… You’re a bufoon. Yes the idea is crap but there’s a hell of a lot of people that enjoy the taste. If they didn’t McDonalds wouldn’t have tried to hijack their cricket campaign with Shane Warne launching their ‘southern style’ chicken products including burgers, nuggets etc. To add further comment to your idiocy McDonalds, KFC and Red Rooster all use the same chicken suppliers (Inghams and Steggles) the only difference is that McDonalds use ‘frozen chicken’ while both KFC and Red Rooster use fresh chicken. So while yes it’s deep fried in KFC’s case, the recipe was designed over 70 years ago. What do they do? Change it?! Unlike McDonalds, KFC aren’t pushing there food as an everyday item with breakfast “healthy” (scoff) lunch and dinner. I worked on Maccas a while back and their dinner trials for kids doing pasta just added further to their leave no consumer unturned. And let me tell you, that stuff was laden with yet more preservatives and crap than any guinea pig would care to eat. At least KFC don’t go making bullshit claims… Sorry, did that ruin your lunchtime visits to subway?
It’s easy to criticize deep fried food, it’s tasty. I have fond memories of family time once a month as a treat sharing a bucket with my family. I also loved the odd fish and chips night munching on deep fried potato scallops and fish.
Get a life mate. Dont be such a superficial wanker. It’s moronic people like you that shout your views from the mountain top for everyone to hear and then in the next breath complain about this country being a nanny state. You can’t have it both ways.
One last thing, KFC stores close at 10pm. They could be open 24/7 if they chose. McDonalds seem to be the only ones that capitalize on the after 10pm crowd. You know, the times when people really make poor food choices.
tremendously important work.
Just an aside.
The ‘URDB’ representative who handed out the ‘world record’ would presumably be from that renowned website ‘urdb.org’ where ‘YOU create your own world records!’ Basically anybody can submit ANY ludicrous record and they’ll give you an award.
I might have to submit how many times I’ve watched a KFC ad and wept for advertising.
6:43… another pathetic comment on the blog and written on a Sunday evening. Get a life and have a laugh
I used to wonder why it was that KFC ads were (without exception) so awful and stupid.
Then it dawned on me that smart, intelligent advertising would be the last thing you’d do if you ran this brand.
It’s such a lowest common denominator product that the audience doesn’t really want your fancy, clever advertising.
Dumb food for dumb people requires dumb advertising.
So while this stunt was dumb, and everything these guys do is also dumb, it’s probably absolutely perfect for the brand.
I just pray I can get out of advertising without ever having to work on it.
Looks like someone offended the KFC client (1.03).
He obviously feels strongly about the ‘great’ food KFC produce.
I wonder though, does it matter whether Maccas and KFC get their chicken from the same place? I look at what they do to that food and I don’t see the end result being what you’d describe as ‘good food’.
Whenever I’ve walked past KFC it’s usually fatties I see behind the glass chomping away on chicken burgers. Perhaps they should invest in special glass windows that make the people sitting behind it look thinner.
At least that might get me through the door.
@ 1:03, 1:15, 9:34 et.al.
Does the term corporate lackey ring a bell? It must be so gratifying to come home to your children at the end of a hard, self-effacing day of lying to yourself and the world and have to explain to them how well you’ve cleaned the client’s fat ass all day. Have a look in the mirror. Can you see your belt? Then stop eating what you sell to poison the rest of the world, and please stop contributing to the relentless dumbing down of the public airways with your mindless marketing.
Now that I think of it, keep doing your soul destroying job of turning those in the world too ignorant to know the difference into the waddling army of the chronically obese. They’ll all die young of massive coronaries, and we’ll call it natural selection.
I can’t be bothered to comment on this idea.
@12.50.
Get off your high horse. These people watch the biggest loser. They also watch Jamie Oliver. People aren’t dumb as you put it from your little eastern suburbs abode. I smoke cigarettes. Why? because i love it. I know the consequences. If you don’t know that ‘fast food’ is bad for you, if you eat it daily then you mustn’t read or own a tv. Answer this: have you ever heard KFC make a health claim? The reality of today is that it’s cheaper to eat take out than it is to make dinner. I dont hear you attacking woolworths? They’re posting $billion profits. It’s cheaper to buy Australian products in New Zealand than it is in Aus. After shipping and transport costs, how does that work? Woolworths also went on a pub buying spree in Queensland and discovered they were making quite a lot of money from poker machines, way more than what they were making in the bottle shops. Hmmm.
Welcome to 2010 mate. If you can’t deal with it, move out of advertising and into Lobbying.
@ 8:35
So let’s all role over and play dead, because things are getting worse and we have no choice but to clam up and join the parade to the lowest common denominator.
Nice strategy. Absolutely gutless of course, but allot less work that actually taking a stand, but that would be getting on a high horse would it?
You deserve what you get.
8:35 – It’s 2011, eejet.
Arguing the merits of the KFC product is hardly the issue. This is not the blog to be airing your misgivings about capitalism or fast food, nor is it the blog for those working in advertising to be claiming the high moral ground. Clearly it’s also not the blog for writers or the otherwise literate…’role over and play dead’, 9:33?
It is apparently, the blog for eagle-eyed spelling and punctuation editors like yourself, 1:28.
By all means let’s not debate on our industry blog the merits of the system of economics which gives us the opportunity to profit by selling worthless or dangerous goods, or the quality of the products we sell that the population may ingest, or even the morality of our actions in recommending products to the public that may be hazardous to their health, and especially not the moronic approaches we make to consumers that serve to lower the bar of public activity and discourse. No, let’s critique errors in spelling, because real writers like yourself are far more concerned with proper text than with the substance of an argument, and people in advertising are far too disinterested in the consequences of their work to want to debate its merits.
Ask any proofreader at a major publishing house how many times they’ve had to correct the work of even the most renowned literary giants for using their when they meant they’re, or here for hear, or even role for roll simply because the author was too focused upon the sense of an idea or a passage and overlooked an obvious spelling error.
Sadly, those proofreaders seldom manage to become writers themselves, the absence of any real ideas or the capacity for critical thought being the stumbling block.
You’re in the wrong line of work, 2:16. Advertising is no business for those with a conscience about the morality of the stuff the industry produces. You are a paid advocate whose job it is to accentuate the positives and conveniently play down or completely ignore the negatives. That’s the bottom line. You are a barrister who is employed to persuade the consumer on behalf of your clients using a vast palette of tools. Make it seem fabulous, exciting and desirable – that’s what you’re paid to do. Don’t like it? Leave. You can’t pick and choose. Many years ago, I worked under a CD who refused to work on the agency’s two largest clients, one a tobacco company, the other a meat corporation. It was the nation’s most respected creative agency at the time. Needless to say, he didn’t last very long. By all means ridicule my very minor point about the illiteracy which is endemic to this blog, and do it at length if it makes you feel good, but you really can’t sidestep the issue. Moral indignation in advertising is hypocrisy on a breathtaking scale. Just where do you propose the line be drawn between morally acceptable and unacceptable products? Let’s see you develop the argument, since that’s what you seemed to be itching to do before you went off on an excursion with your off-brief diatribe about proofreading directed at me.
Fortunately, working in the business of advertising does not relinquish one’s responsibility as a member of the human race, nor does it excise one’s political, moral, or personal conscience where matters of right and wrong are concerned. The fact that you see advertising and morality as mutually exclusive probably says a good deal more about you personally and your own experience in the business than it does about the business itself.
We understand that your familiarity with the more creative end of the street may be a bit limited, and we’re sorry to shatter your provincial illusions, but there are plenty of top creatives in the world, and agencies who insist upon hiring them, who refuse to work on socially and morally repugnant business, or for that matter on mediocre business in general.
As far as determining where to draw the line is concerned, it’s much the same in business, in advertising as it is in the rest of one’s life. Use your intelligence to discover exactly what it is that you’re engaged in and with whom, then employ your own ethical sense to determine if it’s doing the right thing. Even a barrister has no obligation to act unethically, immorally, or illegally on behalf of a client, but then it sounds as if you may have slept through that ethics course at university, and it’s a pity as there are far too many like you who seem to feel that personal profit and expediency are trump cards to acting responsibly.
Expediency is always the easy road, like lazy and unoriginal work, but intelligent creative comes from hard work and critical thinking, and from my experience this is usually the product associated with people of integrity as well.
@12.27 am.
I’m getting bored of you’re rubbish. I bet you love burger king ads too don’t you. When you accept a job at an agency you tow the line. If not pack your things and go. You’re easily replaced by someone that wants to write ads. Kfc ads are shit. Always have been and probably always will be but it’s a global business that employs an agency to help sell a product. I couldn’t help but notice that you had no answer for the things that previous bloggers posts other than things that were irelevant to your original article. Instead you attack people with irrelevant nonsense. Corporate lackey etc. I’m starting to get the feeling you may have been kicked off the KFC account in which case that is both sad and embarrassing.
That first chick of the group of girls on the right is hot! Kfc Definately got that one right! niiiiiceeee….