Firefox compatible.

Coverage of other food websites:

Joe Jaffe on the BK Subservient Chicken campaign 4/29/2004

Campbell Soup's website for kids 2/3/2005

Client: KFC
Creative Agency: Foote Cone & Belding

In early September KFC debuted its new KFC Flavor Station with an advertising campaign developed by Foote Cone & Belding, Chicago. With the tagline, "Be the boss, choose your sauce," the campaign features KFC's first microsite, ChooseYourSauce.com. This choose-your-own adventure-like site invites visitors to drive the story with their taste buds.

The ChooseYourSauce.com story opens in a stereotypical office. Once you enter the office you're asked to pick one of KFC Flavor Station's three sauces: Honey BBQ, new Fiery Buffalo or new Sweet & Spicy.  Each sauce offers up a different adventure. Choose a flavor and choose your destiny, as the site says. If you're feeling daring, go down the Fiery Buffalo path with pal Marty. If you want a solid choice, opt for Honey BBQ with Lorraine. Or leave it up to destiny and choose Sweet & Spicy with boss Mr. Wadowitz. All three adventures will offer tasty tidbits.

David Jones, FCB's executive creative director of emerging platforms, led the creative team of Jonathan Richman and Alex Zamiar to develop the new campaign.

"This high tech, emerging platform microsite environment does something pretty old fashioned, it embraces a product benefit," says Jones. "The ability to choose your own destiny and outcome of the story really links with the empowerment of choosing what sauce you want your wings dipped in. It's as simple as this: You're in charge." 

The microsite is complemented by a television spot, "I'm in Charge," which began airing in September.
-- Foote Cone & Belding

KFC’s new Flavor Station creative captures my immediate attention. The first thought that enters my mind is that I am getting a chance to peak in someone else’s cube. My second thought is “What is this advertisement for?” I see the KFC box and copy in the upper right hand corner and quickly realize it is for KFC. 

The interactivity and video functions are interesting but for someone like me, who has about a 10-second attention span, I still don’t understand the message and the objective of the campaign. Is this a campaign for new KFC flavors? There’s a lot of copy that promotes and launches the new Flavor Station, and I get it now. Will someone really be interested in clicking on a video and waiting for it to download to learn about new KFC flavors? The die-hard KFC fan might be. 

I like the concept and the art direction, as it is enticing to interact with. The creative does not hit me hard with the message -- maybe that’s intentional. But many clients ask for bigger logos, and maybe it would help here.
-- Eric Yang, media director, Black Bag Advertising

This site is a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the Seinfeld-meets-Dilbert branded entertainment quality of it: well acted and entertaining in a watch-the-train-wreck-happen sort of way. The occasional references to KFC were also, ah, tasteful. However, I found the interface distracting: once I clicked on a plot choice, the audio rolled instantly, but the video lagged behind. I was confused by this and thought I was having browser trouble, so I restarted from another browser and the same thing happened. Eventually, I figured out that if I paused the playback, the audio and video would synch, but that's a lot to ask of a viewer. There was also a lot of buffering start-and-stop that made me feel like I'd stepped into the Way Back Machine to early 2000 (and I was watching this on a T1). All in all, though, I was intrigued enough by the narrative to share it with a friend via IM, and anybody who has pulled time in a cube farm will enjoy a grimace of recognition.
 -- Brad Berens, executive editor, iMedia Communications, Inc.