Complaint against KFC ad bride's 'unhealthy amount of chicken' upheld by ASAI

A complaint against fast food outlet KFC for an advert that featured two women eating an “unhealthy” amount of chicken has been upheld by Ireland’s advertising watchdog. Picture: KFC

A complaint against fast food outlet KFC for an advert that featured two women eating an “unhealthy” amount of chicken has been upheld by Ireland’s advertising watchdog.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASAI) said the TV advert featuring a bride and her bridesmaid making a pit stop to KFC before a wedding “should not reappear in its current form”.

It is one of 14 adverts across TV, radio, social media and elsewhere deemed to have breached the ASAI’s advertising code following complaints from the public in its latest bulletin.

In the KFC advert, a staff member places a large bucket of chicken on the counter and says “here’s your order” to the customers, a bride in a wedding dress and her bridesmaid.

The ASAI said: “The server speaks again and says ‘congratulations’ to the bride, and she responds with ‘thanks hon.’ The bride and her bridesmaid then head to their table, and they are featured holding a piece of chicken each from the bucket.

“The bridesmaid tells the bride that ‘we should probably head to the church soon,’ the bride points to her engagement ring and says ‘If I can wait 12 years for this, he can wait for 15 minutes’. The on-screen text, reads, ‘When it’s got to be KFC. It’s got to be KFC’. The on-screen text is accompanied by a male voiceover who delivers the same message.

“The advertisement ends with the bride and her bridesmaid taking a piece of chicken each from the bucket to eat.” The complainant to the advertising watchdog said that, as far as they were aware, the bucket of chicken in question was a family share portion. The ASAI said the complainant “considered it unhealthy for two people to eat such a sharing bucket of fried chicken in 15 minutes”.

The ASAI said the complainant “considered it unhealthy for two people to eat such a sharing bucket of fried chicken in 15 minutes”. Picture: KFC

In response KFC said that the advert was about “satisfying a craving for KFC, not encouraging excessive consumption”.

It said the “15 minutes” remark was a generalised colloquial expression for an indeterminate amount of time.

“It was not intended to imply that the wedding itself would take place in exactly 15 minutes or that the bride and her friend had to eat all the chicken before then,” the ASAI said of KFC’s assertion.

“They said the bucket featured in the advertisement contained a 6-piece chicken portion, so a mix of 6 bone-in chicken pieces, drumstick/thighs etc. The said that neither the bride, nor her friend were shown finishing the bucket, nor was it a given that they had to do so before leaving the restaurant.

“In conclusion the advertisers said that the advertisement had presented a heightened comic narrative that drew a humorous contrast between the relative importance the bride placed on her craving for KFC and her upcoming wedding.”

Having analysed the bucket of chicken in the advert, the ASAI said it estimated that the depth of the bucket “would contain more than one layer of chicken” and created the impression that the portion size was more than six pieces of chicken.

It said: “The Committee noted that Section 8.4 of the ASAI Code outlines that ‘Marketing communications for food should not encourage or condone excess consumption. They should not encourage an unhealthy lifestyle or unhealthy/unbalanced eating or drinking habits’.

“The Committee considered that the impression created by the portion size of the bucket depicted in the advertisement was that it contained more than 6 pieces of chicken, the sharing size for two people. They considered, therefore, the advertisement was in breach of Section 8.4 of the Code.”