Taking center stage, though, is the Chicken Chamber heating compartment that makes the console as unique as it is. Colonel Sanders has always been KFC’s “north star,” and he has different personas for different audiences. For football season, he’s portraying Rudy, the star football player in a sports movie of the same name. The animated “hot Colonel,” as he’s dubbed by fans of the game, panders to gamers, fans of Japanese culture, and anyone looking for love, Zahuemsky told me in an email. We’re going to have an even greater bond, and it’s going to be special.
Now what does KFC stand for?
The trailer was released on June 15, 2020, and created ripples across the gaming sphere. At the time of writing, the trailer has more than 2 million views on YouTube. It has garnered mostly favorable responses from gamers. The simple answer is that brands like KFC are tiptoeing into gameplay to attract consumers — to make them invested in a game tangentially related to what they’re trying to sell. Revamping its mascot as an animated silver fox was a strategy “to make the Colonel a part of pop culture,” the company’s chief marketing officer, Andrea Zahuemsky, told the Wall Street Journal.
KFC has indeed come up with some pretty novel marketing campaigns in recent years, using an assortment of male and female celebrities to portray Colonel Sanders. But this new take is definitely unexpected, although it’ll probably catch the attention of anime fans. Colonel Sanders comes in plenty of different flavors. Now, there’s another Colonel Sanders in I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger-Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, trading in his computer-created abs for anime-style tousled white hair.
That’s right — bachelors number 1, 2, and 3 answered questions for the privilege of stepping out on the town with Marcia Brady, America’s favorite TV California blonde. “The KFConsole with a chicken warmer will not nudge gamers to switch, especially not without any exclusive gaming titles or hardware.” In February, KFC and Crocs announced a limited edition shoe covered in a fried chicken print. KFC said its new console had a custom-built cooling ThaiMatch system that uses heat produced by its components to warm the chicken chamber. Below, KFC’s U.S. chief marketing officer Andrea Zahumensky answers our burning, oil-seared questions about I Love You, Colonel Sanders! Sage is the newest Culture writer on the block at Mashable NYC. They recently graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, and have previously worked for The Dr. Oz Show, NorthSouth Productions, and on Netflix’s ‘The OA Part II’.
KFC, who had decided to stay relatively quiet during the great Chicken Sandwich War of 2K19, was instead frying up something else on the side. In collaboration with game developer Psyop, the fast-food chain dropped a listing on Steam this morning for an upcoming dating game, I Love You Colonel Sanders! Trying to get the attention of a consumer is becoming more challenging for companies and their marketing teams. In a world where viral gets noticed, coming up with the best way to push a company’s message out is not easy. For KFC, its dating sim, romance novel, and the latest, a Lifetime movie starring Mario Lopez, have been the route they’re going. Fried chicken restaurant KFC announces I Love You, Colonel Sanders!
KFC teamed up with Cooler Master to create the “KFConsole,” the chicken chain said in a statement on Tuesday. It is essentially a high-end gaming PC with components made by Intel, Asus, and Seagate. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a number of companies have faced growing pressure to halt operations in Russia but have not yet done so.
Haymarket Marketing Communications:
Most of this energy is converted to heat by the components. Compare that with the large food heaters used in fast-food restaurants that usually take up about 250 watts of power, and you can see how there should be plenty of heat for the Chicken Chamber to do its thing. All in all, this new gaming console is definitely a stroke of crazy genius from KFC. The upcoming console houses an impressive array of hardware to provide a buttery-smooth gaming experience in the latest games.
Adding to the list of odd games my Steam friends saw me play, “I love you, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator” by Kentucky Fried Chicken is more of a glorified commercial than an actual dating sim, which is a shame because they could have done so much with it. We haven’t seen more than an animated trailer and a few screenshots, but it looks like the game follows a pretty standard formula for anime dating sims. There looks to be some romantic rivalry, some cooking competitions, and some hearthrobbing tension between you and the Colonel as your relationship blossoms like a bowl of mashed potatoes.
We have to remind everyone that normally, KFC is a fast-food fried chicken establishment. We know that’s hard to believe sometimes, considering that the Colonel is also somehow a DJ, an influencer, and a gamer. But now he’s also a chiseled Dream Daddy-esque hipster of an ambiguous age who would probably feed you vegan KFC nuggets while playing Weezer’s latest album. “Do you have what it takes to be the business partner of and win the heart of the most famous chicken salesman of all time?” the game description reads.
Pat Grace met with Saunders at his holiday home in near Toronto and agreed to franchise the brand in Ireland. In 1970 Grace returned to Ireland after a number of years in Canada to open his first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants in Phibsboro shopping centre in Dublin. Eventually he opened another six restaurants located in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. After disagreements over cost cutting with KFC management in the early 1980s, the Irish restaurants were renamed to Pat Grace’s Famous Fried Chicken reportedly retaining the original recipe. Pat Grace went on to wholesale the chicken spice blend under the brand Grace’s Perfect Blend.
Your choices have real consequences with real animated characters’ feelings at stake. This wasn’t the only time a game simulation was used in a brand’s marketing. However, in an article for Vox, the publication questioned why the company went with a romance game instead of a cooking-type game. “Why did the chain want players to pursue love with its mascot rather than directly interact with its menu items?” the publication asked. It plays into a “weird thing from Japan” trope, which is something the developers call on — though not explicitly — to explain away the many unearned weird things that happen in I Love You, Colonel Sanders!