Has KFC Gone Too Far? Name Your Baby After The Colonel & Win $15,000
KFC is known for its oddball marketing stunts – think chicken-scented perfume and burgers launched into space – so its latest efforts to shock hardly come as a surprise.
For its latest effort, the fast-food chain in the US is offering any customer willing to name their newborn son after company founder, Colonel Harland Sanders, a cool $11,000 ($A15,143).
That’s right, name your kid Harland and take home 11 grand – one for each of the Colonel’s famed 11 herbs and spices apparently.
However, there is a caveat. The cash has to be spent on the kid’s college tuition when he turns 18 and the offer is also only valid for babies born on the 9th of September – the Colonel’s birthday
Thus far, the stunt hasn’t got the favourable press that KFC would been hoping for. It’s been labelled “dystopian”, “sad” and “your child will have to explain for the rest of their life that they were named after a corporation’s publicity stunt”.
The Atlantic wrote the stunt was “a disappointing confirmation of the lengths to which corporations will go to set themselves apart in the churn of the social-media age.”
A KFC spokesperson telling the newspaper: “Ever the entrepreneur, Colonel Sanders bounced back from a series of failed jobs and business ventures to found Kentucky Fried Chicken in his 60s.
“We couldn’t think of a better way to honour him than to help support Baby Harland’s future successes with a college donation.”
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