“Do Not Attempt” – KFC and a little girl on a bike

How many of you all caught KFC’s new Red Velvet Cake promotion? This darling 30 second ad features a girl on a bike towing her little brother in a wagon through the drive-through at a KFC to order a bucket of fried chicken and a red velvet cake.

KFC bicycle and red wagon ad

Even with the silly “Do Not Attempt” disclaimer at the beginning of the ad, I love that this ad shows children acting independently of their parents and using a bicycle to extend their travel range. This was normal 30 years ago, and I hope it becomes normal again. Just like with car commercials that model road stupidity, ads like this demonstrating unsupervised kids playing outside can influence behavior.



I wonder what the discussion to approve this ad might have looked like. Yum Brands, which owns the KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut brands, prohibits serving people who roll through their drive-throughs on bicycles for corporate and franchise locations. The creatives at the ad agency are either completely ignorant of their client’s policy, or they are secret agents working on behalf of the All Powerful Bike Lobby to undermine the influence of their corporatist overseers.

5 Comments

  1. As someone who bikes through drive-thrus quite frequently, I’m astonished at how many people think it’s unsafe. I can’t think of any place else on the road where people are driving very slowly and fully focused on what’s in front of them. My only beef is that in many configurations you won’t actually get detected if you’re alone on a bike without a car around to trigger the sensors.

  2. I moved to California from Maine – in Maine the law states that an establishment with a drive-through my not discriminate against cyclists, and if the window is open for motor vehicles, cyclists must be served as well. Perhaps we could suggest similar legislation to Carol Liu?

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