Kentucky Fried Chicken, http://www.kfc.com/ Intelligence: KFC, as the company is now named, is eternally associated with Colonel Harland Sanders. The Colonel is one of the rare cases in which a company has used a real person (and in this case, the founder) as the template for a cartoon mascot. The television advertisements from KFC in the 1990s have already established the hip, dancing, animated Colonel as a fried chicken guru... so much so that it's unlikely that the majority of the web audience will remember the man himself from before his death in the 1980s. It is because of the tradition of Colonel Sanders that the majority of competence is assigned. If a person with no prior knowledge of that tradition saw the animated Colonel, however, that visitor might think the Colonel is a fool. Wearing a sheepish grin and often dancing while carrying a bucket of chicken, the icon does not inspire confidence among those who have not tried a sample of the restaurant's food. Character: Especially in the case of Colonel Sanders, it is important to remember the seriousness of the site's product or service. In nearly every animated form of the Colonel, the man is a downright silly cartoon. If KFC was offering home mortgages or cancer treatment advice, then this character's behavior would pose a problem. With something as casual as fast food, though, there is really nothing to lose with a hip, dancing old man. While the animated Colonel doesn't have a moral code, the original Colonel did, and without the assistance of the new mascot, KFC provides historical and community related information. In the end, the mere enthusiasm of the Colonel (who, in most of the current graphics on the site, is in the act of exclaiming something to the visitors) makes him a likable guy. Goodwill: The Colonel runs into some problems when considering his willingness to understand or respond to the visitors of the site. One of the curious aspects of the KFC site is the constant shift between the image of the new animated Colonel and the faded image of Sanders himself. This juxtaposition doesn't seem to have much logical reason behind it, and there's no telling why the webmasters are only partially using their new mascot. The site itself has virtual tours of "the Sanders Cafe" but the single image of the mascot seen on the main index page of the site remains frozen in expression wherever the visitor goes. In short, he's just a token mascot that never moves. Whereas the Colonel himself is well supported on the KFC site, the Colonel Sanders mascot's ethos is below average. With only some more responsiveness, and some of the enthusiasm he exhibits in the television ads, he could be a very successful online mascot. If he walked the visitors through the "recipe" and "ordering" sections, he could be finger-lickin' good. Back to the Report Overview Site created 11/27/99, last updated 5/14/00. All textual content published under the supervision of the Department of Speech Communication at The University of Washington, Seattle, and hosted by Filmtracks Publications of Missoula, Montana. All artwork is protected by the Copyright © 2000, of the site(s) it represents. Its appearance on this report is for informational, non-profit use, and may not be redistributed without their expressed written consent. Direct all questions or comments about these pages to Christian Clemmensen.