MAM
KFC drops its iconic slogan amid coronavirus
NEW DELHI- The Covid2019 situation has utterly changed the marketing dynamics in the last five months, whether it’s a B2B or B2C company, everyone is trying to adapt and reinvent the marketing strategies.
Brands in recent time have put efforts to talk about the coronavirus through their campaigns, and build connections with their TG’s.
The iconic fast-food giant, Kentucky Fried Chicken, aka KFC announced to suspend its iconic slogan, “It’s finger-lickin' good for a temporary period due to the prevailing coronavirus issue. The company feels that the slogan doesn’t fit with the consumers at this point of time due to the Covid2019 outbreak.
The brand has been using the popular catchphrase since 1956 across all countries, the tagline in a way has enormously helped the brand to resonate with the customers.
It’s quite interesting to see that a brand has given a pause to its slogan to aware people of the cause. However, the reason to take a break from it has come after the widespread backlash the brand faced in the US.
"We find ourselves in a unique situation – having an iconic slogan that doesn't quite fit in the current environment," KFC's global chief marketing officer, Catherine Tan-Gillespie, said in a statement.
However, nearly after five months now the restaurant chain has unveiled a 30-second ad campaign on its YouTube channel depicting KFC chicken buckets with the "Finger-Lickin'" words blurred out from its captions.
The ad then ends with the tagline "That thing we always say? Ignore it. For now,".
The campaign has been launched in markets like the UK, the Netherlands, South Africa, Canada, parts of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.
Previously, in March 2020, the brand launched an advertisement in the UK with the tagline, which portrayed consumers licking their own fingers after eating chicken from KFC. However, the ad was criticised on social media platforms for being irresponsible and insensitive during such difficult times. The UK’s advertising standards authority received at least 150 complaints. However, the video was withdrawn by KFC later.
KFC was founded in the 1930s by Harland Saunders opened its first franchise in the 1950s and has used the finger lickin' good slogan since then. The fast-food brand dropped the slogan in the late 1990s but brought it back in 2008.
KFC has 22,500 outlets around the world – 900 in the UK and Ireland. It is owned by Yum! brands, which also owns Pizza Hut.
Brands
Tessolve lands a semiconductor veteran to drive its next big push
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, who started his career at ISRO and has spent 35 years building chips and companies, joins the Bengaluru-based firm as president and chief operating officer
BENGALURU: Tessolve has never been shy about its ambitions. The Bengaluru-based engineering services firm already counts 18 of the world’s top 20 semiconductor companies among its clients, employs more than 3,500 engineers across 12 countries, and last year pocketed a $150m investment from TPG. Now it has hired the executive it believes can turn those assets into something bigger. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, a 35-year semiconductor veteran who once built satellite payloads for ISRO and has since scaled engineering organisations across three continents, joins as president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.
THE MAN AND THE MANDATE
The appointment is, by any measure, a serious hire. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu comes to Tessolve after senior leadership stints at HCL Technologies, Altran and Wipro, where he managed large profit-and-loss portfolios and oversaw cross-regional teams. Over the course of his career, he has been instrumental in bringing more than 1,000 new products to market across the high-tech, energy and manufacturing verticals. Before the private sector claimed him, he began his working life as a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organisation, contributing to research and development in charge-coupled device technology and satellite payloads, a foundation that shaped everything that followed.
In his new role, he will lead Tessolve’s global growth strategy: expanding its engineering capabilities, deepening customer relationships and accelerating innovation across semiconductor and high-performance computing domains. The brief is broad, but the context is specific. Tessolve operates in the $550 billion global semiconductor market, and its recent moves, the acquisition of Germany’s Dream Chip Technologies and the TPG funding round, have sharpened both its reach and its expectations.
Srini Chinamilli, co-founder and chief executive of Tessolve, is characteristically direct about why Ravi Kumar Chirugudu was the choice:
“As we scale our global semiconductor and system engineering capabilities, Ravi’s appointment marks an important step forward. As global semiconductor demand continues to accelerate across industries, it is creating significant opportunities across the semiconductor lifecycle, from design, packaging, validation and systems integration. Ravi’s deep knowledge and leadership in this ecosystem brings the right mix of industry expertise, customer connect and execution capability, which will play a key role in strengthening our position as a trusted global engineering partner and reinforcing our market leadership.”
THE NEW ARRIVAL SPEAKS
Ravi Kumar Chirugudu, for his part, frames the move in terms of timing and culture, two factors that veteran executives tend to weigh as heavily as title or compensation:
“I am happy to join Tessolve at a time when the industry is rapidly evolving towards more complex, AI-driven systems. What stands out to me is its strong people-first culture and its commitment to bringing value to its customers. The strength of its global team, combined with its deep expertise in semiconductor innovation and next-generation product engineering, creates a solid foundation to build differentiated, scalable solutions. I look forward to working closely with the team to drive strategic growth and strengthen its role in shaping the global semiconductor ecosystem.”
The reference to AI-driven systems is not incidental. The semiconductor industry is in the midst of a structural reshaping, driven by the insatiable compute demands of artificial intelligence. For engineering services firms like Tessolve, which offers end-to-end capabilities from silicon design to packaged parts and invests in high-performance computing, high-speed interfaces, photonics and 5G, the moment is both an opportunity and a test. The company says it is well positioned to capture the next wave of industry growth. Ravi Kumar Chirugudu is now the person who has to prove it.
He came in from outer space, literally, and spent three decades learning how the semiconductor industry works from the inside out. Now Tessolve is betting that accumulated knowledge can help it cross the next frontier. In the $550 billion global chip market, the gap between ambition and execution is measured in engineering hours and leadership quality. Tessolve has just gone shopping for both.
