You may have been freaked out by the latest KFC culty advertising campaign, or maybe it just left you salivating, but what does someone who actually survived years in a cult think?

The latest KFC advert campaigns have certainly raised eyebrows. Nothing says ‘eat our chicken’ like cult imagery, robed followers, and the vague threat of ritual sacrifice, and this is all set to a finger-licking beat. No, you’re not confused, KFC is really sticking with a campaign that encourages us to quite literally worship their chicken… and gravy. I respect Colonel Sanders as much as the next vegetarian (so I suppose not that much), but most people agree this seems entirely odd. 

There is another advertisement within their current marketing push for the Dirty Louisiana Campaign that shows people under cloaks in another cult-like setting, eating the burger under headcovers. This along with the themes most have taken as borderline cannibalistic and downright culty, has been enough to distract from the food and cause confusion and leave people with curiosity rather than hunger. 

So is this just an ad, or is it another example of how trauma gets trendified? To unpack it all, I spoke with Richard Turner, a cult survivor and advocate about how this campaign lands when you’ve lived through the realities of cult trauma. 

Richard describes his three-year cult ordeal as “very insidious and sinister”. A religious cult took over his life through a slow build of coercion, manipulation and control. His relationships, finances and work was completely under the control of the cult he found himself in. 

“No one was speaking to me and treating me like I was a criminal just because I disobeyed them,” he said. “They set my relationship up, sabotaged it and then almost creepily tried to support me through the breakup, when they were the ones who broke it up.

“They tried to control me, and when they couldn’t completely, they all turned on me. It was just horrendous.” 

So how does someone who has experienced such trauma react to seeing such stereotyped cult imagery, when most people find adverts like the KFC ones are a bit weird and maybe disturbing? For those who have real experience with cults, is it less quirky, more queasy? What’s being packaged here isn’t just a gimmick, but arguably the aesthetic of manipulation, obedience, and coercive control, coated in eleven secret herbs and spices, deep-fried and rebranded for mass consumption. But despite masses being triggered on behalf of people like him, Richard said “it’s a difficult one.”

“When I watched that KFC advert, I thought it was quite funny,” he said. “If there were people in the advert quite clearly being abused, that’d be totally inappropriate, but if you really look at it, it doesn’t look like, ‘they’re in an abusive cult’, it just looks like an odd spiritual group. 

“And I think sometimes with stuff like this, there is room for humour.” 

But it hasn’t been totally plain sailing since recovering from his experiences of cult coercive control, and Richard says that there is still an issue of sensationalism surrounding the coverage of cults. “It’s a fine line between being distasteful and acceptable,” he said. “I’ve seen sensational documentaries and things that talk about cults as if they’re some morbid novelty for entertainment purposes, forgetting that people’s lives have been destroyed.

“It’s those dramatic American voice overs that describe cults and experiences in the same tone you would get in a show about monster trucks or something, I find that so frustrating.” 

The people feeling weirdly towards media like the KFC ads and complaining that it’s triggering to survivors have their heads in the wrong place according to Richard, and the mentality that we can’t joke about anything leans into the system of control that cults themselves utilise. 

“There’s a risk to people being offended by everything ‘culty’,” Richard explained. “Cults have zero tolerance for a lot of things, and people can end up behaving in a culty way by criticising everything themselves, it can become the same kind of controlling.

“One of the things that happens in cults is that people lose a sense of humour, because of the control, leaders’ jealousy, people are suppressed and not able to be themselves. So my first thought when I saw those adverts was ‘you know if people are offended by this, I’m not sure that’s right’, I thought it was a bit funny, we need to laugh at stuff and not be offended by stuff all the time.” 

Let’s lighten up and dig into a wing then?! Well, not quite yet, because people’s fascination with the nature of cults is still a form of exploitation that survivors have to experience even after escaping. 

“One of the big problems in cult recovery stuff is that people seem to think it’s a novelty, people don’t take it seriously, even the word cult has so many weird connotations around it, because the cults that have been on television have been really outrageous or severe. It’s become a weird, morbid novelty and people don’t realise the emotional impact, that it’s people’s suffering and maybe that’s not just for your entertainment.”

Richard doesn’t disagree that marketing might be jumping on slightly strange cultural bandwagons in a bid to be outrageous. 

“It’s a strange thing, it’s almost fashionable to be interested in cults at the moment,” he said. “And that can be really helpful in terms of getting people talking about it, but it can tip over into an odd space where ex-cult members are ashamed to speak out, because they don’t want to have these ties that they’re really weird or in a crazy religious group, or gullible in some way. Because that’s all the baggage that comes with that word unfortunately, but anyone can end up in that situation of coercive control.” 

Richard now supports other ex cult members and people who have been victims of coercive control and manipulation, working as a counsellor and teacher, as well as raising awareness. For survivors like him who share their story, weird pop culture moments like this are a reminder that we can laugh at the absurd, but still shouldn’t lose sight of the realities they echo. At the heart of people’s uncomfortableness, are real people like Richard who may not be reacting the way that masses are assuming they are, and should maybe be left to enjoy a bit of chicken like the rest of us, safe in the knowledge that KFC definitely aren’t cooking people.