YNOT – Evidently, sex sells chicken, too.The late “Colonel” Harlan Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, might just get a kick out of KFC’s new “bun-warming” advertising campaign. The fast-food chain’s latest gimmick is to plaster a delicious message across the delectable posteriors of female college students.
The ads promote the chain’s new bun-less Double Down sandwich. Young ladies at Spalding University in downtown Louisville, Ky., are taking up the company’s challenge — and snagging $500 each — for handing out coupons while clad in sweatpants emblazoned with “Double Down” across the seat.
The move has not impressed the National Organization for Women, which calls the stunt sexist. It’s also ill-advised, according to NOW President Terry O’Neill, because it risks offending KFC’s target market, since women make more than half the decisions about what families eat.
“It’s so obnoxious to once again be using women’s bodies to sell fundamentally unhealthy products,” she told USA Today.
Some female college students agree. Candace Carlucci, a senior public relations major at Colorado State told the paper, “It may be funny, but it’s also inappropriate and degrading.”
KFC’s marketing chief sees the situation through different eyes. John Cywinski said men are the chain’s key customers, and employing attractive women is an effective way to attract male attention. He told USA Today KFC had received no complaints about the week-old campaign by Tuesday afternoon. The company plans to employ a Facebook promotion to find willing women and other campuses to which to expand the program in the coming weeks.
KFC hopes the promotional effort will help it drag its restaurants out of a domestic revenue slump. Nearly all of the company’s growth in recent years has been in international expansion; year-over-year same-store sales fell 7 percent in the U.S. during the second quarter.
Earlier this month, KFC confessed a recent survey indicated more than six in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 can’t name the man pictured in the company’s logo: Colonel Sanders.
There seems to be little doubt, however, they recognize buns when they see them.
