Lately it has become more common to see companies changing their advertising efforts on social media to adapt to an internet culture that cycles through a new funny post every couple of hours. But are these campaigns being taken seriously by the younger generations these companies are trying to target?
This past weekend at the Ultra Music Festival, KFC engaged in one of the most blatant attempts to become viral by paying for “Colonel Sanders” to DJ a five-minute set on the main stage. Rifting off of DJ’s like Deadmau5 and Marshmello, this DJ wore a costume head made to resemble Colonel Sanders and played electronic music with visuals on massive screens reading, “Finger Licking Good”.
In some ways, KFC was successful because minutes later people around the world had seen this spectacle via social media. However, based on the response many music fans saw right through the act. Instead of sharing and LOL’ing, Twitter users responded disappointed that a music festival, something very sacred to music fans, would be tainted with a huge product placement like this.
For electronic music fans and music festival attendees, live performances are taken very seriously. I mean, people pay hundreds of dollars to experience DJ’s that they could hear at home through headphones. Yet KFC seemed to have made a mockery of this, hiring some random person to promote fried chicken on one of the world’s largest EDM stages. And even though KFC tried to use this environment to target a young audience, the audience felt disturbed by this out-of-place capitalist venture.
So where did KFC go wrong? I believe their mistake was assuming the audience would interpret the set as a humorous way to increase brand awareness. For a company like KFC that is well known around the world, raising brand awareness is very difficult. Everyone knows about KFC, so a huge stunt like this is seen as more of a desperate ploy for attention rather than a way to get to know the brand better.
Fiji Water ran into a similar problem months ago when they hired the “Fiji water girl” to stand behind paparazzi photos at the Golden Globe Awards. At first, the girl became an instant meme, and everyone found the situation hilarious. However, attitudes quickly changed when social media accounts began to point out that this was clearly a paid advertising campaign.
The line between being perceived as fake and meme-worthy is obviously very thin, and some companies are riding the line better than others. However, it is critical for large corporations not to underestimate their audience. It is the age of information, and through social media people are calling out advertisements that capitalize on the humor of the internet. This is at least the case with KFC, and will likely continue if more industries use music festival environments as a place for obvious and colossal promotions.