Eden Essick, our Project Manager at Nucleus recently pondered KFC’s shift from healthy grilled chicken to the ooey gooey Double Down…

The Blogosphere is abuzz with commentary on KFC’s new sandwich, the Double Down. There seems to be a general repulsion slash fascination with the Double Down, inevitably leading to the Who Can Eat It and Live to Tell the Tale challenge taken on by the likes of Sam Sifton of the NY Times and the guys over at NPR’s Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me blog.

The reaction here is likely exacerbated by the stark contrast between creating sandwiches that replace bread with fried chicken versus fast food companies that are trying to make their food healthier. In the last year, we’ve seen Chipotle align itself with Food Inc. (a documentary about the ills of the fast food industry), Starbucks remove products with high fructose corn syrup, and Dunkin Donuts advertise better-for-you alternatives to sugary, fatty breakfast and lunch treats.

There’s no doubt that KFC’s in-your-face, double or nothing dare to consume the consummately unhealthy ‘sandwich’ has created noise. The company has adopted a challenger brand stance with the Double Down, not only in contrast to healthier products at other fast food joints but also to its very own grilled chicken product line launched with huge ad budgets and great fanfare about a year ago.

This got us thinking about the KFC brand. A stately old Colonel and a bucket of fried chicken takes us back to simple times, picnics, the old south and a fun family meal.

As the fast food industry caved to the demands for healthier menus KFC responded. It is no surprise to us that good health claims by a brand based on fried food didn’t get any traction. In the year dedicated to grilled chicken, same-store sales declined four.

So KFC jumps again, this time taking its cues from Burger King, who’s brand has been reinvigorated by amplifying the creepy side of its kingly mascot and appealing to young men’s appetites for massive quantities of big flavor, food and fun.

KFC assumes they can make dramatic shifts to product mix and promotion and the brand will simply weather the storm. We’re not so sure. Brands that sway with the wind, that follow every fad tend to lose both our interest and our loyalty in the not-so-long run.

And while we love a good challenger brand, it’s inauthentic to dive from an attempt at healthy straight into the fat, so to speak. In our view it would have been far more prudent before ever embracing healthy alternatives, to consider who loves KFC, why they love it, what they expect from the brand and how to best serve food and a brand experience that amplifies all that, along with profits!

We’ll leave you with Jay Leno’s take on the Double Down:

KFC coming out with their new Double Down sandwich. It’s bacon and cheese wrapped inside two pieces of fried chicken. In fact, today, Al Qaeda said: “We quit. When it comes to killing Americans, we can’t keep up with you guys.”