• Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Monday, August 16, 2010 10:51 AM

Marilynn Pankratz, who has been frying and selling chicken pieces in eight outlets she's run since 1963, evidently doesn't care much for the brand image types like her leader, Roger Eaton, president of Yum Brand's KFC franchise, who has been trying to appeal to health-conscious, on-the-go consumers by pushing grilled chicken and sandwiches over its traditional fare.

"They hire marketing guys with blue blazers who tell us what to do with our damn stores," she tells Burt Helm and Alex Sherman. "But it's one thing to be behind the big mahogany desk calling the shots and another to be down here in the trenches."

Pankratz is part of KFC National Council & Advertising Cooperative, which represents all U.S. franchisees, which sued KFC to gain control of ad strategy in January. KFC, which calls the lawsuit baseless, did drop an "Unthink KFC" campaign that some franchisees saw as a misguided effort to distance the chain from its Southern fried legacy.

And the Association of Kentucky Fried Chicken Franchisees, which speaks for about two-thirds of all U.S. KFC restaurants, has hired ex-McDonald's CMO Larry Light to bolster local marketing, Helm writes. The outcome: This month's 70th anniversary of Original Recipe is being celebrated in participating stores with pennants depicting fried chicken buckets and life-size stand-ups of Colonel Sanders, who always wore his blazers white.

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