Struggling KFC resurrects Colonel Sanders for ‘bizarre’ advertising campaign

HAVE you ever wanted to juggle babies as an “obstetrician” Colonel Sanders? Now you can, as part of a strange new ad campaign.

STRUGGLING fast-food chain KFC has revived the iconic Colonel Sanders in what has been described as a “bizarre” turnaround campaign.

The past few years have seen the former chicken king lose ground to hungrier competitors. In 2012 it lost its position as America’s top chicken seller to Chick-fil-A, and now makes less money than chains half its size.

Chick-fil-A made $US1 billion ($A1.29 billion) more than KFC did in the US last year, The Washington Post reports.

So in a bid to refresh its image by harking back to its past, KFC has enlisted Saturday Night Live alumnus Darrell Hammond to star in a $US185 million ($A239.30 million) marketing push.

The real Colonel Harland Sanders died nearly 35 years ago, and KFC hasn’t featured him in TV commercials for about 20 years.

KFC also plans to redesign its restaurants with light fixtures shaped like chicken buckets and quotes from Colonel Sanders hanging on the wall.

For customers that don’t know who Colonel Sanders is, KFC is giving them an online history lesson. At ColonelSanders.com, the fast food chain gives details about Colonel Sanders’ past, including that he dropped out of school in the sixth grade. There’s also a video game on the site featuring Sanders, who was born in 1890.

Some of the humour is strange, to say the least — in one level of the ColonelQuest video game, players take on the role of Sanders as an “amateur obstetrician” and must “catch as many babies as you can so the Colonel won’t get sued for malpractice”.

It’s apparently a good time to be a marketing icon for a fast-food chain. The resurrection of Colonel Sanders comes a couple of weeks after rival McDonald’s said it would bring back its classic character, the Hamburglar, to TV ads. And Burger King’s creepy ‘King’ character also made a cameo appearance at the boxing match between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquaio earlier this month.

KFC is owned by Kentucky-based Yum Brands Inc., which also owns Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.