A mischievously contrite ad in Britain on Friday featured an empty chicken bucket with the image of Colonel Sanders. Below his smiling face, the letters that make up the company’s name were displayed in their typical typography, but they had been transposed to suggest a four-letter word that is associated with profanity, not poultry.
If a vowel was missing, the meaning was clear, expressing a sentiment held by both the restaurant and its customers, as problems with a new supply chain forced the closure of nearly two-thirds of KFC’s British branches this week.
Britain’s culinary reputation might have been built on a foundation of fish and chips and cucumber sandwiches, but the country has developed an extraordinary fondness for poultry slathered in batter and fried in oil.
So the closure caused no small amount of grief and rage in a country where fried chicken — whether at KFC or at one of its many imitators, like Chicken Cottage, Tennessee Fried Chicken and Dixie Chicken — is never far away.
Police were forced to tell people that chicken shortages at KFC were not really a law-enforcement matter. At least one lawmaker said he had been contacted by angry (or perhaps just hungry) constituents. And a video of a peeved customer complaining that “I’ve had to go to Burger King” was widely viewed.
The KFC ad was headlined “We’re sorry,” while acknowledging the chain’s bizarre plight. “A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It’s not ideal,” the advertisement read. “It’s been a hell of a week.”
But if its supply chain is a mess, the chain’s wordplay game is strong. In a statement, KFC said the ad was a “tongue-in-cheek rearrangement of our brand name intended to indicate our first thought when we realized the impact of our closed restaurants on customers in the U.K.”