KFC Gets Futuristic in Blade Runner-Style Ad

KFC’s “Crispy” creative platform, which celebrates the brand’s origins, won Kantar’s Most Effective TV campaign of 2022. Now the fast-food brand and its French agency, Havas Paris, brings that saga to a close with an ad inspired by science fiction classics Blade Runner and The Fifth Element.

Titled “Forever Crispy,” the new spot shows a couple driving around a futuristic Paris and scanning radio stations that come with dashboard holograms representing the performers. They stop on  “I Like It Crisp,” a track created just for the campaign by CLNL SNDRS and produced by HRCLS.

The song plays as they drive past a holographic octopus advertising a new movie, a storefront offering the chance to use VR headsets to go on a one-hour virtual vacation and a barbershop where a device styles hair into cubes.

Their destination is a KFC drive-thru where the ordering interface might be holographic, but the food is just the same.

“The idea was to project KFC into the near future, a Paris where everything has become virtual and holographic,” Havas Paris associate creative directors Jordan Molina and Ludovic Miege told Adweek. “With director Romain Chassaing, we drew inspiration from science fiction classics like Blade Runner for the atmosphere and set design, and The Fifth Element for certain costumes. The challenge was to create something spectacular with a touch of humor and plenty of details.”

The ad will run for three weeks across TV, VOL, OOH, DOOH, Snap, Meta and TikTok. A second installment in what Havas is calling the “KFC Universe” will be released soon.

“After two great ads centered on the brand’s origins, we needed to do something fresh,” Molina and Miege said in a statement. “This time, we decided to project KFC into the future. To show that the brand’s crispy chicken was, is and always will be the real deal, even when everything else has become artificial.”