The Newest and Greatest Marketing Move by KFC
By: Jordan Fraser
Tags: Money, Marketing, Advertising, Finance, Entertainment

The Newest and Greatest Marketing Move by KFC

The Lifetime Original Movie brought to you by KFC

Photo: Lifetime

From ‘Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life’ to ‘Newlywed and Dead’, Lifetime Original Movies have made themselves famous and a lot of money by being much more memorable than they are high quality.

After years of spending the bare minimum to provide us with the most laugh-out-loud titles imaginable, Lifetime has a new movie for us that is breaking the internet in half.

Backed by a licensing deal with KFC, Lifetime has made a horny romance flick starring Mario Lopez as sexy Colonel Sanders.

In the movie, the Colonel is called Harland, and he’s the brand new chef for the beautiful and seductive Jessica.

But oh no! Jessica is already engaged to be married to someone else! Will she choose the man her mother arranged for her? Or will Jessica side with the man who professes to have invented the perfect combination of 11 herbs and spices?

The film is called ‘A Recipe for Seduction’ and will air on Lifetime on December 13th.

Crazy? Or Genius?

The film only runs for 15 minutes, and after airing will be available to stream on “all Lifetime apps” whatever those are.

A lot of netizens are taking their doubts to Twitter, confident that this is nothing more than the spectacular trailer, and that no movie has been filmed.

They’re sure that it’s a prank, but why would it be?

There’s nothing more valuable to a business than being talked about, and even after Apple announced a new pair of overpriced earphones, all anyone is talking about is the sexy new KFC movie.

It makes perfect sense that Lifetime would spend KFC’s money to make a zero risk movie that tries to capture attention at the end of the worst year on record.

At what better time could this movie have ever emerged? Lifetime caught us at the exact moment when we most desperately needed to be distracted, and judging by the trailer, they only spend a few hundred bucks to do it.

Lifetime has described this tiny movie their first foray into branded mid-form content, which suggests that more could be on the horizon.

Either KFC is going to receive a lot of positive attention from this endeavour and sponsor a sequel, or McDonald’s will get in on the action and commission “Sesame Seeds of Desire” to be released in 2021.

Screenshot from ‘I Love You Colonel Sanders’ developed by Psyop

This isn’t the first time

Last year, KFC commission the creation of the video game “I Love You Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator” developed by Psyop and released for free on Steam. Eager players are thrown into an anime world where sexy Colonel Sanders is daddy and teaches at the “University of Cooking School: Academy for Learning.”

Over the three days you spend at the university, your goal is to attract the attention of sexy Colonel Sanders and win him over. You have a best friend, a rival, and even a robot.

While critics panned the game for its lack of emotional depth, players gave it a 100% user approval rating for its gorgeous art and fun concept. Many however have seen it for the marketing gimmick it is.

Marketing

Ultimately, both ‘A Recipe for Seduction’ and ‘I Love You Colonel Sanders’ are clever creations of the KFC marketing team to ensure their brand is being discussed positively by the world at large.

Twitter falling to pieces over this movie was their goal, so KFC executives must be thrilled right now. Hell, someone somewhere is probably cutting everyone at the KFC marketing department a giant Christmas bonus right now to celebrate the occasion.

Marketing is getting more and more cut-throat because of how saturated the internet has become. YouTube is showing back to back unskippable ads, and even the New York Times is slipping native advertising in with the regular articles. The more we’re all marketed to, the more desensitised we become to it. The only way for advertising to really resonate with us anymore is when we choose to consume it.

This new movie will be us choosing to watch an ad, and many of us will willingly make that choice. As time goes on, companies will find new and creative ways to coerce us into choosing our advertising.

KFC has us for now, but within 15 minutes the internet will move on, and they’ll need something else to get our attention back. Because they know that without all the window dressing, their product is fried chicken.

It’s an unhealthy, meat-based meal that’s dripping in cruelty to animals and underpaid/under represented staff. When your product has this many issues, you need to get creative when developing a new narrative for global conversation.

So for now, let’s all tune in and watch Mario Lopez play sexy Colonel Sanders as he navigates a sexy love triangle on December 13th. As far as we know, it’s not a practical joke, it’s a real tiny movie, and it’s coming our way whether we’re ready or not.