KFC is a busy place in Japan in December, and daily sales can go up ten times their usual daily sales.
And to get a ‘KFC special Christmas dinner’ means ordering weeks in advance or standing in queues for hours.
And it has been like this since the early 1970s.
KFC opened in Nagoya, Japan, in 1970 and one day, its manager, Takeshi Okawara, overheard a couple of foreigners talk about how they missed turkey for Christmas.
Turkey was not available anywhere in Japan (it is still imported and not readily available), so Okawara thought a fried chicken dinner could be a good substitute for turkey.
So, he introduced a bucket of “Christmas Chicken” and started promoting it as the “party barrel”.
In 1974, KFC launched a national “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!) marketing campaign.
The campaign promoted the idea of bringing hot chicken home to families, an idea that resonated well with people thanks to the cold Japanese winter.
There was no tradition of Christmas in Japan — even today, less than 2% of the Japanese population is Christian.
So, this campaign not only brought about the ‘awareness’ of the celebrations on Christmas, but it also said, “this is what you should do on Christmas”.
So, “Christmas=Kentucky” got firmly fixed in people’s minds.
Around 11 million people are estimated to eat the same fried chicken meal each year on Christmas in Japan.
Takeshi Okawara, the Harvard-educated manager, climbed through the company ranks and served as president and CEO of KFC Japan from 1984 to 2002.
