KFC Is Bringing Colonel Sanders' Voice To Your Living Room

KFC Canada is letting customers chat with founder and former spokesperson Colonel Harland Sanders as the first company to use innovative voice technology from Amazon. The fast-food chain worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant's cloud computing platform, to recreate Sanders' voice with Amazon Polly.

In line with this year’s aim to prioritize innovation and tech, KFC has been one of the earliest adopters of Amazon's voice platform since the e-commerce giant started selling Alexa-powered Echo devices in the country more than two years ago. 

While Colonel Sanders died in 1980, the fast-food chain has successfully resurrected the Sanders persona in a series of wacky marketing campaigns showing celebrity impersonators of KFC's late founder, introducing the iconic spokesperson to a new generation of customers. The chain also released a Colonel Sanders dating app last year. In April 2019, KFC hilariously poked fun at influencers with a computer-generated, hipster Colonel Sanders posting photos of his “fabulous lifestyle” on the brand’s official Instagram. 

KFC Canada is among the companies developing innovative branding strategies like these as consumers grow increasingly averse to traditional advertising, but often welcome unique experiences that are hard to find elsewhere. KFC Canada can provide a branded voice experience to its customers with the new Alexa skill while handling more routine tasks like reordering chicken.

Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant continue to gain popularity, and consumers are demanding the same level of easy, voice-controlled ordering from their fast-food brands. Chains like Chipotle, Sonic, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut and Wingstop currently offer voice ordering services and Wendy's is looking into the feature. A survey from MDR Group and Progressive Business Insights found that 20% of consumers are "extremely interested" while 19% are "very interested” in using voice ordering to order food from restaurants. 

As more consumers use the popular voice platform and Amazon gets better at developing accent and speech patterns consistent with those of celebrities, it is likely that other marketers will similarly add personalized voices to their Alexa marketing efforts.