“We’ve had some amazing celebrity Colonels over the past two years, and each of them has put their own twist on our original Colonel Harland Sanders,” said George Felix, KFC US director of advertising. “But no one can play the Colonel like the Colonel can play the Colonel. Unfortunately, our original Colonel stopped making ads in the 1970s, so we utilized technology to bring him into the 21st century to sell modern-day offers like our $5 Fill Up and $10 Chicken Share himself.”
In addition to its throwback advertising campaign, KFC will also be introducing a contemporary take on the chain’s iconic bucket. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the KFC bucket. The new bucket will be decorated with pop culture relevant, fried-chicken colloquialisms.
KFC’s chicken is still prepared with its secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices, and then pressure cooked at a low temperature. KFC still contends that only one copy of its secret recipe is in existence, and it is housed and closely guarded at KFC headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, in a top-secret, 770-lb. vault encased in two feet of concrete with a 24-hour video and motion-detection surveillance system. Not even the company that produces the blend knows the exact formulation – portions of spices are developed at different locations in the United States, and then shipped to a single location where the spices are blended together before being sent to the restaurants.
KFC has nearly 4,200 restaurants across the US, and the Original Recipe chicken is the No.1 selling menu item. Each year, KFC sells approximately 60 million buckets of chicken, and approximately 680 million pieces of Original Recipe fried chicken in the US.
KFC Corporation is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc.
