Let it be said that impoverished folk enjoy fried chicken. Pick an area where impoverished folk
live (Hackney, Whitechapel, Streatham), and you have yourself an area that
Colonel Sanders wouldn't touch with a shitty stick. (If he did, he'd
be shut down within minutes.)
Let's assume that you've spotted this gap in the market and want to open up a horrible little hovel that sells fried litter disguised
as fried chicken. How do you trade on the fame of KFC without actually using the KFC brand? Simple. Just follow these
golden rules when designing your shop sign:
Only use red, white and blue if possible. This creates a strong association with America. Which is a "good" thing.
Ensure that the words "Fried" and "Chicken" appear in your shop's name.
To avoid alienating illiterate chicken lovers, make sure the sign has a nice big picture of a bird.
Strengthen that KFC association by ensuring that your shop's name includes the name of a southern US state.
If all the southern states have been used up by your many competitors along the street, pick a state from somewhere else in the US.
If you can't think of any more US states, use a word that has some kind of southern US resonance.
If all else fails, throw in a word that suggests quality, friendliness or corporate success.
Examples
As with many things, the easiest way to learn a set of rules is by example:
A rarity these days: a KFC that slipped through the net. Notice that the words "Fried" and "Chicken" aren't
actually mentioned and there are no images of chickens in sight.
By the Christ, they're at it in Paris too. Even though it's not Halal like their one, the Clapton Dixy crew are sure to go over and give
these Rue St. Denis boys a kicking if they find out about it. But, despite the risk, it can be good fried chicken practice. Like someone
else's ideas? Then steal them.
This place has just about everything; the name works ("It's American, but it's more exotic than that. That's why we've added
an 'A' to the end."); textbook colour scheme but offset nicely with touches of yellow; a whopping great American flag; and, in case you needed more convincing
that this restaurant has something to do with America, there's a chicken in a big cowboy hat. Well done, lads - great fried chicken marketing.
Another example of downright theft. But can it really be called theft when they stick a barely visible "New" in front of the name?
One for the lawyers to discuss.
Now this is more like it. When Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC, they made a sensible, modern branding decision. These chicken
aficianados followed the same route. Now, not only do they get associated with the best in the business, but they forge a link with French Connection in the process.
And using the whole fascia to display the name is pure rebellion. Meanwhile, the chicken on the perpendicular sign laughs at any would-be detractors. Genius.
But if you don't put some thought into the use of KFC-like initials, you end up with rubbish like this.
Here's an interesting example of reverse marketing psychology. If you come up with a name that is stupid enough and combine it with a picture of
a dog in a baseball cap, people might just come in to your restaurant "for a laugh".
Back to basics. The rules are followed to the letter: excellent choice of Southern state; strict red, white and blue colour scheme; and
a standard chicken picture. Good work.
These no-nonsense chickeneers tell it how it is. If you're "masters" with a comprehensive product
range, you can get away with just a chicken silhouette.
Who needs any pictures when you've got a name like this?
Best? You could have fooled me. The colour scheme is
the least inspirational I've ever seen and the chicken appears to be staring at a brown trapezium.
So, let's say you're a latecomer to the business and you're really stumped for a name. What can you do? Just resort to that age-old and piss-poor
advertising technique: the common pun.
As I've said before, you just can't go wrong if you follow the rules. These Homerton restaurateurs
tick all the boxes: a thoughtful choice of state, a classic colour scheme and, the icing on the cake, a chicken embedded in an American flag. Superb. It's just
a shame about the smashed window upstairs - a New Taxas revenge attack?
Sorry Aun - you haven't got a clue. As you seem to have realised, selling up is the best thing you can do.
If the sheer number and variety of rival chicken outlets scares you, you could always "change the script". This place
is sure to hit the headlines as the only fried chicken restaurant in the world that uses the European Union flag instead of a picture of a drug-crazed rooster.
Would you ever eat food that had any kind of association with Karachi? Nor would I. In cases like this, the sign is nothing
to do with marketing the shop; it's about warning people away.
If you're aiming your family shit-buckets at the Muslim community, all you have to do is ensure you feature the word
"Al" in your name (I think it's Arabic for "not technically food").
When the owners of this place have saved up enough money to buy a letter "K", their temple to American heart disease
will be the envy of their many Barking Road rivals.
But you still need to be specific. Which city is this referring to? New York? Karachi? London? The dull red and white sign
certainly doesn't give us any clues. Perhaps they meant "Shitty".
"Sod KFC. Our place is going to be different. It's going to be like Pizza Hut. And tasty, too."
Given the current shortage of available state names, some kind of reference to a compass point is a good substitute. Obviously "Southern" is best, but
anything will do. However, don't get too excited and throw the rulebook away; you still need good colours and good
chicken pictures.
Green and yellow chickens? A giant mushroom? "Chalet"? The
owners of this place must be on drugs.
As you've probably realised by now, the Perfect Chicken scene is a very crowded one.
How do you make your Perfect Chicken stand out? Why not tie it in to the
new millennium (that arrived years ago)?
The Kenssy approach is an interesting one: cram as many different nuances as you can into
a single name and hopefully increase your appeal. Oh no... Oh-oh... Ohio... It's all
here.
This is well-executed chicken vending: a no-nonsense
chicken picture, fairly standard colours and a name that suggests the efficiency and convenience
of a cashpoint.
When you open a luxurious new fried chicken shop, you have a right to be
proud.
Don't think you have to squeeze your chicken picture into a corner. If
you've got a cheerleading, line-dancing rooster, give him the space he needs. That's
what the "Quality" boys have done.
Where is the "Open Range"? What are the "Smoky Hills"? And why has the chicken here got a horrible yellowing skin disease?
If you think you're better than your rivals, why not tell everybody?
This restaurant isn't any old Dixy: it's a Top Dixy.
Strict use of red, white and blue and a short, appropriate name: good work.
Yes - it's the cheerleading, line-dancing rooster again. Only this time, he's advertising a multi-coloured
"Variety Meal". This could only be allowed to exist in Lewisham.
If you're going to open a branch of Western Fried Chicken, hammer home the message
by choosing a suitable cowboy hat for your ambassador.
In all of this, be careful: if your restaurant is too shitty, your
chickens might fly away.
What better way of promoting harmony between America and the Arab world than through
the medium of Fried Chicken?
"Burj" is the noise you make when you bite into a chicken
wing and realise it contains mashed claws and beaks.
Good use of the name/colours/picture formula here, although associating
your shop with "Pizza City" might cause some confusion.
A cosy-sounding name will do nothing to reduce the risk of salmonella. Still, it's the thought that counts.
In the bootleg craziness that has enveloped the world of fried chicken, you
can always play safe with an alternative spelling.
If I asked you to draw a seal escaping from a half-peeled onion with a
small trumpet on top of it, you might end up with something like
this. The seal-onion-trumpet combined with the nonsense of fonts
suggests to me that the sign was designed by a blind spastic.
If you can't think of a suitable American state, compass point or other epithet
for your restaurant, don't feel you have to use one.
If you call your shop Kennedy Fried Chicken, there's a law stating that you
must display a picture of the Statue of Liberty (see earlier). If you can
draw an idiotic grinning face on it, then so much the better.
There is always room for innovation. Although it breaks most of the rules,
I can appreciate what the
King Rooster team have done.
As we've seen, royalty is a popular theme. And if you make your chicken
look hard by depicting it
with its wings folded, you'll tell the world you mean business.
If anybody can tell me why the chicken here is driving
a train, I'll buy them a bucket of breadcrumbed, pox-ridden chicken flesh.
Minimalism can work well, as long as you stay in touch with the KFC ethos. Unlike this shithole.
Take a deep breath and compose yourself. The wordplay
in what you are about to see may induce a mixture of euphoria, dizziness and sickness. It's a shop in
Kent Street, Gornal in the West Midlands. There's nothing left to say after that.
I'm not sure if the collection will ever be complete. I thought I'd seen everything.
And then along came this. No chicken image, a terrible pun,
awful spelling - this could only happen in Manchester.
If somebody has picked the state name that you were going to use, don't panic.
Just remove one letter and you'll be able to avoid any lawsuits. For extra peace of mind,
consider depicting a chicken that looks mean and has its arms folded.
It might look like a dirty, horrible, little shop but when you walk inside it opens up
into a whole village.
If you live in the nastiest place on earth where people are blind through methylated spirit abuse
and couldn't care less if they ate dog shit (e.g. Dalston), you can do anything you like with your chicken outlet. It
will make no difference. In cases like this, make a sign yourself and keep it simple.
The word and the bird are spreading. The teachings of the Colonel have reached
as far afield as Vietnam. According to Bennett: "They haven’t got the southern state element, or the right
colour scheme, but they do have a pink chicken mascot. Unfortunately,
when I was there, the bird flu epidemic had forced the government to slaughter and
incinerate all the chickens in the country, so they didn’t actually have any chicken available to sell.
I think the banner is advertising a special on burgers or something, but I don’t speak Vietnamese."
The chicken may look angry and uncomfortable, but the owners of
this West London poultry oasis have hit upon an excellent
branding formula: take a lesser-known southern state and link it indelibly in people's
minds with the most famous brand in the world, Coca Cola.
Always try to think outside of the family bucket. The innovation in
this branding combination is threefold: 1) an
association with American farming; 2) an association with the nearby football team,
"Queen's Park Rangers"; and 3) an ass-kicking red, white and blue chicken in a cowboy hat.
Poor old Zam was obviously denied a Chicken Cottage franchise.
As the saying goes, if you can't join them, beat them (but make sure your shop sign looks similar).
Remember, if you are opening a chicken restaurant, quantity counts more than quality.
People don't care what they eat, as long as there is an obscene amount of it.
Don't shy away from this fact; embrace it. And if you don't have
a chicken picture, it can do no harm to turn at least one letter into a burger.
Heed this warning. In all the excitement of trying to differentiate your brand,
refrain from using a picture of a four-fingered rubber glove.
This suggests a deformed cleaner mopping up breadcrumb-vomit rather than a restaurant
serving nutritious family meals.
By opting for the noun rather than the adjective, these Harrow Road
roosterites illustrate a supreme self-confidence: "We aren't 'perfect'; we are 'perfection'. And
we don't need any pictures to prove it."
Many of you will know my penchant for cafés with permanently fixed open signs (cf.
the Café Open Collage"). I'm pleased to
see fried chicken entrepreneurs
following suit.
I know. There's already a Chicken Hut in the gallery.
But this Birmingham plagiarist shows how painting your shop purple
can totally ruin a very promising sign.
Don't ruin a decent rhyme by choosing a font that's too small. Otherwise,
you'll have to start using apostrophes and the
sound made by someone trying to pronounce your name will be akin to that made
by a stray dog when it vomits out a half-eaten box of wings that it has found
on the floor nearby.
You may want your rooster to appear in costume. But you may also be worried
about jumping on the cowboy and ringmaster bandwagons. Don't panic. Just
dress your ambassador up as a pirate.
If you own a fried chicken outlet, street urchins and pub-stumblers don't have
to be your only target diners. You can branch out and make your restaurant a place
for the whole family. And to make sure the kids aren't scared of going in, just
get your rooster to encourage them with a
friendly thumbs-up.
In the average brain, there is no association between
budget fried chicken and nutrition. You can steal a march on your rivals
by sterngthening this association and reminding your customers that your restaurant
actually has something to do with food.
The choice of initials that closely match KFC on this
shop's sign
is nothing new. But the addition of "Express" to the name and the use of italics
assure visitors that they won't have to spend much time inside.
Sometimes you're operating on a very restricted budget. You visit the signmaker
and realise that you can't afford a picture of a delirious Americanised chicken
or a full set of words in your name. What do you do? Take "KFC"
and shift one of the letters
further along in the alphabet; it's your only hope.
If you were opening up a chicken outlet in Oxford to appeal to well-read,
upper class students, you might decide to deviate completely from the "red, white and blue"
American approach and draw upon P.G. Wodehouse's
Jeeves & Bertie Wooster characters instead. But this place is in fucking Deptford where
nobody can read.
A lot of fried chicken "regulars" are hooded-top-wearing, scooter-riding
mobile-phone-thieving teenagers. With this in mind, you can appeal to their "txt"
sensibilities by
aligning your brand with that of a
famous mobile phone retailer.
I'm all in favour of "changing the script". Why not shun the ubiquitous red, white and blue
rooster-based American livery in favour of
an Italian one with real pictures of real food?
I'll be interested to see how this experiment turns out.
Choosing a name like this can go either way.
On the one hand, people might take it to mean that your food is wholesome, meaty and
substantial; on the other hand, cynics might assume that the "chunks" referred to
are beaks, claws and skull fragments. This illustrates an important
point: explore all connotations of your chosen name before paying a signwriter.
The Dixy boys (whether based in London or Paris - but certainly not Dixieland)
are old hands at the chicken game. But none of them show quite as much dedication
as the Dixyman who has chosen to decorate his upstairs flat with a
giant frigging ecstasy-munching rooster.
Psychological manipulation counts for a lot in this business. If you tell
people that your restaurant is their "favorite" then, eventually, it might actually
become their "favorite". And your message will be all the more powerful if you
can get a demonstrative cockerel in a tuxedo to hammer the point home.
If you're embarrassed about what, at the time, seemed like a clever pun,
you can divert attention from it by tarting up
your design. How about a casual font and
a bit of sparkle?
Sometimes, you just don't have time to do things properly. You need to whip up a brand identity
and start selling mashed beak burgers as soon as possible to help pay the bills. In situations like this,
don't bother with a chicken image; just take the Kentucky Fried Chicken name and shorten it.
(It helps if your name is Ken.)
They may not have worked out how to draw pictures of chickens yet,
but in all other respects the Croatians play by the rules.
I have no time for kebab shop owners who try to break into the fried chicken market.
Do these charlatans think that, by including a standard
chicken logo in their sign, they can really compete with KFC and not be
seen as nasty Turkish mystery-meat diaorrhea-mongers?
When openly mentioning money in your sign, you have
to be careful. Former customers who've had a dose of salmonella as a result
of eating one of your Mouldy Chicken Ovary Burgers might be reminded to sue
you.
If you position your chicken shop next to a big blank wall, there's no
point spending too much effort on your logo; just rely on
the local graffiti artists to help you out with a giant
frigging rooster.
The Nasty Fried Franchise phenomenon has even reached Russia. And
while the crazy Ivans who run Rostiks might not have a
clue about branding, at least they realise how to harness the power of the Web
to make their
rooster wink.
But "Fuck The Commies" (as cigar-smoking rednecks might have said in the 1980s),
let's get back to basics. To make your mark in the world of Fried Cock, you need
to wave some stars and flutter some stripes. America
is where it's at.
California isn't a southern state but it's health-obsessed and renowned for its fresh produce. Rather like this chicken outlet.
It's on a corner and it sells chicken. Keep it simple. You get public respect if you tell it straight.
If geography isn't your strong point and you can't be bothered to waste valuable offal-frying time deciding which part of America to associate your restaurant with, think big.
The KFC lawyers are on their way round to see the owners of Kilburn Fried Chicken. Not because they have infringed copyright, but because they only spent £3 on getting their shop fascia designed.
The tri-colour chicken wording used in this retail tribute to Uncle Sam is more than just a bit of eye-catching design; it gives consumers some indication of the stages of intestinal discolouration they will undergo when trying to digest a "4-piece combo".
I've had a chicken "eureka" moment: Atlanta. Why has nobody else thought of it? It's a great choice of state. These Wembley dark horses have struck oil.
I can only think that the owners of SFC Express are experts in semiotics. They cram so much into their sign: Italian reds and greens morph into American reds, whites and blues; a fat, maniacal, Nintendo pizza chef threatens a bowtie-wearing rooster from afar; the name fuses nuances of the South with the abbreviated efficiency of KFC; service is "express"; and a rogue apostrophe nods cheekily at any Bad Language spotters who might be passing. Umberto Eco would be proud.
Chicken Cottage proprietors have got the right idea: offering a cosy, rural two-up-two-down full of happy-go-lucky chickens is sure to attract plenty of families. But if you're going down that route, you may as well shorten your name and shave a few pounds off the signwriting bill.
It's one thing to associate your shitty-shop with an overpriced, "High Street" fashion brand; it's another thing to use exactly the same name. I don't know whether French Connection or the Health & Safety Department were responsible for shutting it down. I don't much care.
There's a surprising difference between British and American chicken branding: in Britain, the average chicken restaurateur uses a mishmash of fonts, colours and pictures to stun the passer-by into entering his grimy hovel and spending money. America, on the other hand,
imposes a two-colour limit and bans the use of chicken imagery completely.
Indeed, some British poisoners have followed suit. Who can deny feeling a tingle of excitement
at the Zen simplicity of Roosters?
Wordplay is a cornerstone of innovative chicken marketing. But it can also
play a crucial role in overcoming space constraints. Problem: You sell chicken and pizza
but, given your preferred font size, you don't have room to express this fully.
Solution: Nasty pun.
A smiling chicken; white on red; rapid service. This is what a rapper might incomprehensibly call
"keeping it real".
Some jacks-of-all-fast-foods get overexcited by the "photographic fascia" technique.
The result? A pukesome, branding mishmash.
So, that wraps it up. You should now be armed with enough knowledge to open up a shitty-shop yourself. Go out there and make a difference.
Further Reading
If you've managed to get this far, you're a boring freak with no friends.
You're probably the sort of person who'll be interested in the following
miscellany of autistic nonsense:
Fried Chicken Who's Who - an alphabetised list of all
the examples in the gallery to help
you compare notes against your favourite cock-shunters.
Fried Chicken Motifs - a quick point of reference
for when you make your own logo decisions.
Helen Stowell's Chickenland -
a spiritual lightbox that you can use for inspiration during brand brainstorming sessions.
![Matt's [X]FC Lexical Analysis](letter_list.jpg){kind=link}