KFC marketing goes off the reservation, crashes UN

That picture, above, is actually a KFC marketing stunt. (That worked or failed, depending on your definition of “fail.”)

Actor Robert Thompson, dressed as the iconic Colonel Sanders, got as far as posing for a picture with President of the UN General Assembly Ali Treki, before his presence was detected and he was ejected from the area. (The actual Colonel Sanders, who invented the secret Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe, has been dead for nearly 30 years.)

The stunt is part of the ceaseless campaign to promote KFC’s grilled chicken, and involves KFC “lobbying” the UN to admit their new “Grilled Nation” to be accepted as a UN member state. (Okay, that’s kind of funny and clever.)

The fast food giant has written to (UN secretar-general Ban) Ki-moon personally asking for grilled chicken lovers to be be represented at the assembly, in a letter dismissed by Mrs Montas as “absolutely void.”

For reasons unknown at this time, a UN security guard escorted the actor into the secure area:

“It should not have happened – that I will stress, and very strongly,” Michele Montas told Canwest News Service, the Canadian news agency.

“There was some lapse in security and the individual in question was, on the initiative of one security guard, taken into the UN.”

[via snopes]