KFC UK and Ireland’s head of brand and retail, Leo Sloley, has defended the ‘All Hail Gravy’ ad, in which a man is inducted into a cult and transformed into a piece of fried chicken.
Developed by creative agency Mother, the ad has attracted over a thousand complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), amid claims it promotes cannibalism and anti-Christian ideologies.
Until now, KFC has declined to comment on the campaign, but admitting the ad has proved polarising, Sloley explained: “We all have to take some bold moves to stand out. Because it’s just a sea of grey, as we all know, there’s so much safety, I guess, and we took a bold move, and it’s polarising.”
“We’ve got people saying: ‘What the fuck are you doing? This is crazy. I hate it’. And you’ve got some people saying: ‘What are you talking about? It’s a lake of gravy. What’s there not to love?'”
Having gone viral, the clip has now become the most complained about ad of the year, so far, with comments posted on this site describing the ad as “disturbing” and the stuff of “nightmares”.
Writing on Marketing Beat, one commenter said: “[The] advert is disgusting!! Put me off KFC for life!! Looks like deep frying a man. What does this have to do with KFC?”
“We just have to accept that there’s going to be diverse opinions on that, and just back ourselves. Just keep entertaining and putting that out there.”
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Speaking to Channel 4 CMO, Katie Jackson, on 8 May, at an event to discussing a new report into Gen Z and how it interacts with brands and advertising, Sloley confessed that producing such radical content was an intentional strategy to drive engagement and impressions, whether they be negative or positive.
“It is intentional? Yeah, totally,” he said.
“We’re kind of autonomous as a KFC UK and Ireland business, but we are part of a big global American brand. We don’t have an approval process or anything with global in America, but they have really different opinion on our work, and so we have to be ok with just putting that out there.
“I think it comes through Monica, our CMO. She’s super bold, and she really helps give us the freedom as a team to go after it. The worst you can do is be boring.”
