• by Aaron Baar , October 9, 2017

Continuing its string of attention-grabbing marketing stunts, KFC is turning its iconic Colonel Sanders into a WWE Superstar. 

The Colonel, who in recent advertising has been portrayed by a rotating string of comics and actors, will be a playable character in the upcoming release of WWE 2K18. The character will be playable through the game’s “Create-a-Superstar” mode. 

“It’s the latest step in what’s been an awesome partnership with the WWE,” George Felix, KFC’s director of advertising, tells Marketing Daily. “The WWE audience has been really receptive of the idea of bringing the Colonel into the world of WWE.”

The restaurant chain revealed the details in a stunt during the WWE’s “Hell in a Cell” pay-per-view event. During the event, which was co-sponsored by WWE 2K18 and KFC, WWE hall-of-famer, former WWE world heavyweight champion and current general manager of WWE Raw, held a news conference to announce himself and Sanders as playable characters in the game. During the conference, Angle was interrupted by the Colonel’s fictional rival Puppers Cluckers Chicken. In the midst of the interruption, the Colonel (played by Angle dressed in the character’s trademark white hair, mustache and suit) enters to dress-down the chicken character as an “advertising gimmick.”

Further details of the character’s playability will be revealed on the WWE’s YouTube gaming channel, “UpUpDownDown,” on Oct. 12. 

This is the second year of KFC’s marketing partnership with the WWE (which began with a stunt involving the Colonel and the Puppers Cluckers chicken at SummerSlam last year). The entertainment company’s broad audience demographic provides a nice alignment with KFC’s own targets, which include young men and families, Felix says. 

“It’s a great fit for us,” he says. “We know there are a lot of [people] out there watching.”

KFC has undertaken a variety of attention-grabbing marketing stunts this year, from having a varietyofcelebrities playing the iconic Colonel in advertising to having the Colonel be the star of a romance novel to sending one of its chicken sandwiches into space.