AdAgency Joe Public & Chicken Licken’s Lol Likability
Chicken Licken Soul Food, is a highly popular South African fast-food restaurant chain, known for its ‘laugh out loud’ brand persona. Nothing is sacred. With typical South African humour, anything and anyone is considered fair game for parodying, spoofing, and sending-up in their commercials.
Johannesburg based Advertising Agency Joe Public United, has done stellar work in building on Chicken Licken’s brand affinity equity with inventive, and consistently entertaining, brand communication scenarios, brought to life by some of South Africa’s most talented filmmakers.
1. Chicken Licken, New Rider New Slider
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Directed by filmmaker Mfundo Mkhize, ‘New Rider New Slider’ is a cinematic spoof of ‘Knight Rider’, an American action-crime television series that enjoyed a huge fan-following in the 80’s.
Starring David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight, an intrepid high-tech crime fighter, the series also starred Kitt, a highly advanced artificially intelligent, and communicative car that could anticipate impending danger and take evasive action.
Kitt in this Chicken Licken ‘New Slider’ scenario, amusingly has found a new driver in South Africa by the name of Michael Nyathi, who is brilliantly played by actor actor Thabo Malema.
The commercial also features a cameo appearance by David Hasselhoff and a soundtrack of composer Zethu Mashika’s reworked Knight Rider Theme, originally composed by Stu Phillips and Glen A. Larson.
2. Chicken Licken, Soul Food for a Soulful Nation
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa.
In a devastating Covid-19 pandemic year of lockdowns and some puzzling Government restrictions, like prohibiting the sale of rotisserie chickens, Soul Food for a Soul Nation offers some humorous respite in paying tribute to those ordinary South Africans who, in the face of hardship, exhibited extraordinary, and often idiosyncratic means of resilient fortitude.
Directed by filmmaker Tebogo Malope, the commercial stars inimitable comedian Tyson Ngubeni who succeeds in uplifting the nation’s ‘soul’ with his entertaining portrayals of humorous activations by South Africa’s everyday-heroes.
3. Chicken Licken, They Also Crave It
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Directed by filmmaker Terence Neal, the ‘they’ referred to, turn out to be some extraterrestrial characters that in a ‘bolt out the blue’ descend on a family’s home with an amusing impact on their lives.
The unfolding phantasy however, of the Spielberg extraterrestrial parody, has a nasty sting in its ‘tale’ that is highly entertaining to view.
4. Chicken Licken, Sbu 2.0
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Directed by filmmaker Greg Grey, ‘Sebu 2.0’ is a fun parody of artificially intelligent androids.
Motivated by his cravings for Chicken Licken’s hot wings, science teacher Sebu, played by actor Moths Magano, constructs a 2.0 robotic likeness of himself as a stand-in during his absence when he is satisfying his hot wings addition, with humorous and watchable consequences.
5. Chicken Licken, Thato The Time Traveller
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
This long-form storytelling ‘Rock My Soul’ Chicken Licken commercial, directed by filmmaker Alan Irvin, casts actor Sherldon Marema as ordinary guy Thato, who with typical South African humour, unexpectedly finds himself travelling through time promoting ‘inner peace’.
His cinematic time-travel parody encounters are epic, and highly amusing portrayals that are entertainingly enacted with great panache by Sherldon Marema.
6. Chicken Licken, The Bootless Bandit Durango
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Directed by filmmaker Peter Pohorsky, and filmed on location in Almeria, Spain, the fully integrated campaign was spearheaded by a series of five 30 sec commercials that were finally edited into one continuous story called, ‘3 Pieces For Durango’.
Set in a fictional town called ‘ Harmony’, this entertaining parody of the Western movie ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’, depicts the ‘soulless’ Durango, with only one boot, strolling through town in search of his metaphorical missing boot, and longed for ‘inner peace’, of not being called a ‘bootless bandit’.
7. Chicken Licken, Afronaut
Advertising Agency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Filmmaker Pete Pohorsky directed this cinematic astronaut parody of a Chicken Licken order, delivered to a space station crew that humorously doesn’t end quite as well as expected.
8. Chicken Licken, Icelandic Boy
AdvertisingAgency: Joe Public United, Johannesburg, South Africa
Production Companies: They Shoot Films, South Africa, and Truenorth, Iceland.
Directed by filmmaker Alan Irvin, and filmed on location in Vík í Mýrdal, a small village on the outskirts of Iceland’s coastal capital of Reykjavik, the documentary inspired ‘Icelandic Boy’ scenario, is a delightful spoof of Chicken Licken’s truly South African flavour offerings’ far ranging influence.
It seems that young Björgvin Rafnkellson has developed a perplexing ‘South African Condition’ that flummoxed doctors diagnose as probably stemming from ‘memories of a previous life’. A visit from a stranger however, bearing a Chicken Licken meal for Björgvin, solves the conundrum.