Does changing your brand slogan make any difference?
It’s been around for 50 years and three generations in my house know about it. Heck, we’re almost convinced it’s “finger lickin’ good”. So what prompted KFC to drop its 50-year-old brand slogan and come up with the totally bland “So Good”?
Well, apparently KFC had another slogan … Unthink. Wha? Since when? And it’s a slogan for fast food chicken? Could’ve fooled me. And when they checked with their consumers, they found that “only 2 percent of respondents associate the Unthink slogan with the KFC brand, while its former long-time tagline ‘finger lickin’ good’ came to mind for 45 percent of respondents.”
So now they’re taking their consumers for another spin … changing their slogan to play on their 50 year-old claim but in an updated, more generic way. Apparently, finger lickin’ good is very ‘food centric’. So the fast food chain decided to move away from its emphasis on food, and its more generic tagline will make its consumers think of its people and its community.
If they’d asked me, I’d tell KFC that before they want to shift the emphasis from their chooks to their staff, they should make sure that their people are friendly, informed and fast. As they should be. Not sleepy, blur and slow. As they are right now.
I actually rather like their flash fried, artery-choking chicken. Hey, it’s fast food … what are you expecting, Cilantro foie gras? So if KFC wants to take my mind off their chicken and include their people into the spotlight, they better be up to the mark. They would have to better infuse their people with the KFC culture and ethics. Changing your brand slogan should be the culmination of changing internal culture and processes. And the brand had better be doing more to convince us that their people and community deserve our attention. Otherwise, it’s just another cosmetic change that would not make any difference.
