In an attempt to keep up over the years, KFC lost its way, stripping the brand of its own DNA. The Colonel was reduced to a logo. The name was shortened to “KFC” in fear of the word “fried.” Even the brand's famous tagline, “Finger Lickin’ Good,” had been ditched for health reasons. To restore KFC to its former glory, we needed to recommit the brand to everything that made it so special in the first place.

Our idea was to reintroduce America to Colonel Sanders, the world's greatest chicken salesman. Across all of the brand’s touch points, we would bring back KFC’s iconic assets: the full name, the tagline, and the man himself. And because times have changed since the Colonel was around, our campaign would need to bring the Colonel and Kentucky Fried Chicken to life in a modern way, especially when it came to pop culture.

We started by tackling the brand’s owned assets. The stores and packaging were given a Colonel-centric facelift, KFC.com got a new, clean design, and the Colonel took over KFC’s social channels. One man alone couldn't fill the Colonel's shoes, so on TV and in video, a rotating cast of celebrities and comedians portrayed the Colonel, generating conversation with every Colonel switch.

As the consummate salesman, Colonel Sanders would do anything to hype his chicken, so he began appearing in unexpected places in pop culture where we knew our audience would be. He showed up at Comic-Con, in his own issue of DC Comics, on Robot Chicken, and as a wrestler at a WWE live event. He made a vinyl record about Nashville Hot Chicken with Fred Armisen and created fried chicken-scented Extra Crispy Sunscreen. He even had his own Snapchat lens where consumers could transform themselves into Colonel Sanders.

Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Colonel are back!

• The brand and the Colonel are once again in the cultural conversation, with the campaign generating more than 6 billion earned impressions in 2016 as measured by Cision—that’s more than the prior three years combined.

• In the first year of the campaign alone, consideration among our target—millennials 18-34—has increased over six points.

• In just six months, the Colonel helped change the way consumers think about KFC, with a 7% increase in the number of people who say that KFC is a brand “for someone like me” and a 20% increase in the number of people who say KFC is a brand “on the way up.”

• Most importantly, the campaign has helped to drive TEN consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth for the first time in a decade.

As Business Insider recently exclaimed, KFC’s business “is on fire.”