KFC or Koon FC?

KFC tv ads currently running on UK screens in 2021 feature mostly Melanated people or so-called Black young men and women riding on their bikes or gyrating on the screen. Their faces are morphed into animated chickens with accompanying animal noises. Not so offensive? Well let’s look at the history of Black people and chicken.

Licensed under CC-BY-SA

Licensed under CC-BY-SA

Licensed under CC-BY-SA

Licensed under CC BY SA.

Notice how the creators of the KFC advert campaign have used the colour red throughout these images. This works on several levels to disrupt yet relocate our focus onto the ‘swinging’ ‘pendulous’ and ‘red fleshy parts’ of skin on the chicken. This serves to symbolize the dominance and suggestion of lips, mouth and the tongue of a caricatured Black person. (See the above images)

The work of Tom Burrell as a Marketing communications pioneer and Advertising Hall of Fame inductee, provides an excellent analysis and campaign of how to ‘stop the brainwash’ in his award winning book: Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority (2010).

In the seminal book written by Wilson Bryan Key: Subliminal Seduction (1974) in it he shows the visual evidence of how the Media and their Advertising Campaigns are saturated with sex and racial unconscious symbology.

You decide...