| medialifemagazine.com Alternative media
The dispute is between the UN and KFC, the chicken chain, over a promotion that's actually pretty hilarious if you aren't on the UN staff. Here's how it went down: An actor portraying Col. Sanders, KFC's late founder, was able to slip past several levels of security and embark on a tour of the building last week on which he was treated as royalty by the UN staff. Apparently thinking that the make-believe colonel was a person of some import, they even went so far as to arrange to have his picture taken with Ali Treki, the UN General Assembly's new president. Just when did the UN officials realize they'd been snookered? Apparently, when the fake colonel began talking up KFC's new grilled chicken product to some real diplomats. So how did the colonel breach the heavily guarded building, presumably one of the most heavily guarded in the world--and dressed in a costume one only sees in TV commercials and on roadside signs and billboards? Here opinions differ. KFC claims the entire thing was a misunderstanding. It says the colonel, really an actor named Bob Thompson, was on First Avenue nearby the United Nations helping hand out samples of grilled chicken to UN employees on their lunch hour. A UN guard apparently mistook the actor, dressed in the colonel's famous white suit and black tie, for a real military man. He invited Sanders and a KFC photographer inside, which led to the photo op. The UN does not accept this version, to put it mildly. It believes KFC somehow orchestrated the whole thing as a promotional stunt. It points to an earlier stunt in which the chicken chain sent a letter to the UN asking for recognition of the so-called Grilled Nation. It wanted KFC grilled chicken lovers across the country to be recognized as the 193rd UN member state. The UN is threatening a lawsuit. "The UN cannot be involved in a commercial venture. Period. This is being touched upon by our legal department," an angry spokesperson told Canada's National Post last week. Who do you believe? Do you believe KFC was clever enough to sneak the colonel past UN security? That seems pretty far-fetched. Do you believe that a UN worker really mistook the colonel for an important military figure--while he was handing out chicken samples on the street yet? That's really far-fetched. Whatever the truth, the incident has become a huge story on the internet, with blogs, newspapers and wire services posting the picture of the cartoonish Sanders shaking hands with Treki, who is smiling politely. There's been some backlash, too, against KFC, with some commenters believing the stunt went too far. Others say the UN, and others reading the story, need to lighten up. "Do we really think terrorist are going to start dressing up as Col. Sanders and take jobs at KFC in order to infiltrate the United Nations?!!!" asks one poster on Slashfood.com Col. Sanders at the UN seems destined to join any number of other infamous alternative media stunts that raised ire as well as awareness, the most obvious being Turner's 2007 campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" in Boston. The network installed more than 35 blinking electronic signs projecting a cartoon character giving the finger, but the devices were mistaken for bombs, causing a huge uproar in the city. In 2001, IBM drew the anger of city officials in San Francisco after sidewalk graffiti used to promote Linux turned out to be permanent rather than biodegradable, necessitating quite a cleanup job. And in London in 2002, a campaign for di Saronno in which the scent of amaretto liquor was pumped into subway cars was abruptly abandoned over worries that the almond-like scent might be mistaken for cyanide. The same day the campaign started, the Sun had run a story about potential terrorist targets in the city in which it noted that the city’s Underground system was vulnerable to a cyanide attack. And as everyone knows, cyanide smells a lot like almonds. © 2012 Media Life |
