KFC Pulls "Racist" Australian TV spot

Apparently only "colored" pasta is served. vegetable green, sweet potato orange.
If they serve fried chicken they might be in trouble.

it's fried chicken, boss...

(now look here. see you went and changed it and now I'M to look the idjit)

you guys worry too much about what we think of you.

unless you're a muslim, we ain't gonna hurt you other than financially.

Squid ink infused, generally, I believe.


It's cool!

No, it shouldn't.



But, if a hysterical outcry arose from the ignorant, it might need to do so for business reasons.

and your point is?

"But, if a hysterical outcry arose from the ignorant"


shhhh.

you're resembling her remark...

I am not sure if we are worried, as such.

More pissed off.

Actually, I didn't get pissed off until Snood's blind spot remark.

The bitch of it is, now I'm hungry for fried chicken, collard greens, and sweet potato fries.

Sure as **** not hungry for KFC, though...

Sounds as though you're gonna be cooking up a storm!

Americans who hadn't heard of the stereotype. It's just so prevalent that I found it genuinely surprising to hear well read folk say it wasn't something they'd run into.

I honestly don't get how this constitutes forcing our cultural beliefs onto your country. Does your reaction constitute forcing your cultural beliefs onto America?



Yes! That is part of Marketing 101 (cultural awareness). Not for some moral reason, but because the purpose of marketing (especially branding marketing) is to make something look good.

This kind of this is such bad branding (and it is so no matter what the intent of the ad was) that it would be foolish marketing not to try to avoid such gaffes.



If the backlash were to cause enough financial harm to the Australian company running the ad I'd say it's a no-brainier that they forgo such imagery. Especially when it's something that is being construed as something against their core values as opposed to just something that offends someone.



I don't expect KFC to know every possible scenario. But this particular one should have been in their employee handbook. For example, I worked in nurse advertising for a while. In nurse advertising there are a small handful of stereotypes we should avoid at all costs:

1) The "naughty nurse" stereotype. Nurses are sick of seeing the sexualized nurse appear in media and when picking my stock photography for my creatives I went out of my way to avoid the photography that hinted at sexuality. I avoided the ones that didn't really look like nurses, but models posing as nurses. I avoided ones that had too much makeup etc.

2) The doctor's subordinate. There's also the sleeping with the doctors stereotype, and the notion that they are low level employees. A lot of the friction actually comes from doctors themselves who nurses perceive as treating them dismissively so we avoided any imagery that put them in subservient positions with doctors, and avoided doctors in our images altogether (not aways easy since the stock photography followed a lot of the stereotypes).

There were many others, such as them being sick of the "Nightingale" themed nurse marketing and more, but there were some basic things that anyone marketing for nurses needed to know. We didn't need to know everything but some things were too basic for our marketing for us to get by without knowing.



I personally think this is a reasonable level of research to expect from KFC. If it were an Australian company, I would not expect them to know or care about it. But this was an American company and this is their big marketing taboo.

Not really, because this isn't just any possible social gaffe to this particular company. It's THE social gaffe for them in marketing. And it's not just a gaffe in some other country, it's a gaffe in the company's home country.

If they made your "negroni" gaffe it'd be no big deal, but they are a fried chicken company from America where there is a "strong association with African American stereotypes and blackface minstrelsy" and whose very industry started this stereotype through marketing.

This just isn't any odd random thing that can bite them in the ass, this was an elephant in the room they should have noticed.

You know, it took two mentions of that post being the trigger and 5 reads before I finally figured out which way you are understanding it that could cause you to be angry. If finally see an angle, and wanted to say that I didn't read it at all that way. I read it as a blind spot like a car, where it's just not in your field of view. You must have read it like an intentional blindness due to the nature of Australians (i.e. calling them racist).

I think you have it wrong this time, and I think he was just expressing understanding of it not being a stereotype that you guys were aware of, but of course I could have been the one reading it wrong all these times.

I honestly don't get how this constitutes forcing our cultural beliefs onto your country.

You [(some) Americans] believe black people + Fried chicken = racial stereo type. Therefore that commercial should not have been made by Australians for Australian television.
There is also the assumption that because we (americans) beieve this, so does the rest of the world. The Young Turk woman in a single handedly took the racial stereotype of "Afro American + fried chicken = bad" and morpphed it into "ALL black + fried chicken = bad"

Australians dont think black people + fried chicken = racial sterio type, yet the advert still needs to be removed from Australian television.

You see KFC as an American company. I see KFC in Australia as a company staffed and run and organised by Australians regardless of the companies roots.

Americans would not be the only country to want to believe their own culture is the best and everyone else should be like them.
Ie the Aust stance on whaling.
However American culture pervades the world and many are sick to bloody death of the American assumption that the whole world should be like America.
Can we just have the good bits please?

I Just wanted to point out tht i didnt see anything in snoods post to be upset/angry about. I was really pleased he posted. I did clarify that thare was no actually no spot to be blind to. But i think I got his intent.

You obviously have not had the "Elvis Presley Memorial Combo" at Chuy's. (Chicken rolled in crushed potato chips and fried in lard.)

same premise, confused breaders...

and yes you are correct, no i've not had the cholesterol, i mean pleasure.

We keep going over this.....so I expect we'll just have to agree to disagree.

However, being blind or having a blind spot means to me that you are failing to see something which is THERE. I don't think you can be blind, or have a blind spot to, something that simply doesn't exist. The chicken drama doesn't exist in Oz.

As for the being uncomfortable in a crowd of black folk....ok, it's tough for some US folk. BUT THEY ASSUMED IN AN AD WITH SOME OF THE STRONGEST OZ ACCENTS I HAVE HEARD ON THE MEDIA FOR AGES THAT THIS WAS A CROWD OF AMERICAN BLACK PEOPLE!!!!!!

Christ on a pogo stick!

I accept that this chicken thing exists in the USA, and is very real there.

I accept that KFC would be wise to ensure it vets stuff created in other countries which might cause it a problem in its home country.

I accept pulling the ad if it was hurting people (your response to DP's sheet analogy is excellent, I think.)

I don't accept that any non-US person is blind to an existing thing when they aren't super fearful about chicken....

I get what you are saying, but I just don't think yours is a reasonable way of reading it.

I don't think Snood MEANT to cause offence. And I am not actually angry with him (except that he is someone who has a real history of getting EXTREMELY angry with anyone who doesn't know about US specific racial stuff.)

What finally got me angry is that I feel his comment reflected a US-centric arrogance which just assumes that US reality is reality for the rest of the world. I think it reasonable for US citizens (unless raised in terrible deprivation) to realise that their cultural reality is specific to them. Snood, in particular, has very high expectations that people will have a very good understanding of US black history and triggers.

He expects people to have a very good grasp of cultural relativities, in other words.

Yet, to my mind, he simply fails to note that he is NOT holding the possibility for Australian cultural relativities in mind fully, even as he was making a very reasonable attempt to understand them. Its very unconsciousness is what made me furious....he had no idea he was saying anything that reflected total US-centrism.

I am really not angry with him. It's a US related thing.

I have had a look at the youtube comments, btw...and less US folk are accusing Australians of racism (at least in the hundred or so comments I saw) because of the ad than I expected.

Also, there are lots of Americans who seem able to realise that the reactions are silly......but there are quite a few assuming Australians ARE being racist.


I'll think hard about your reading of Snood's blind spot comment, though.

Looking at my just posted response to Robert on this point, can you "get" what I mean?

I know Snood's intention was good, I really do. And I liked most of his post.