The Rise of Nihilism in Marketing (and What KFC Got Wrong)
- Hailey Stangebye
- Jun 25
- 6 min read
Intentionally written without artificial intelligence.
If you live in the world of marketing — or if you appreciate a crispy piece of fried chicken — then odds are you’ve encountered this bizarre and unnerving campaign from Kentucky Fried Chicken. And if you haven’t, then this article comes with some required homework, so give it a watch now.
Unexpected, right?
As marketers, we often talk about surprising and delighting audiences. But this ad from KFC didn’t surprise me in a joyful or curious way. It left me with an eerie kind of emptiness.
Why make a campaign like this — a swirling philosophical musing about belief systems — when you could just show someone biting into a hot, golden sandwich with the line: “That’s finger lickin’ good”?
“Believe in Chicken” takes a sharp turn away from these more traditional ideas, tapping into a growing sentiment that the core beliefs that underpin our world are not as stable as we once thought them to be. Beliefs like:
That we have free will
That life has a meaningful story
That objective truth exists in a post-AI world
Sounds scary! So understandably, KFC stood at the edge of this nihilistic void, shot an ad and turned back to the world to say, “Look! There’s nothing to believe in anymore. We don’t know how to find truth. So if you have to believe in something, fill that void with chicken.”
Evocative? Yes. Effective? No.
Despite the stunning high production quality, intentional symbolism and beautiful choreography, I think this ad’s greatest failure is its interpretation of nihilism.
What is nihilism? And is it really on the rise?
At the most basic level, “[nihilism] is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated,” according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It “comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist.”
Put simply, nihilism is what arises when certainty fails.
In modern culture, nihilism is increasingly showing up in subtle and surreal ways — especially in advertising. Brands like Nutter Butter, Old Spice and even Pine-Sol have all flirted with absurdist, disconnected content. But KFC’s version goes one step further: it positions fried chicken as a stand-in for meaning itself.
Why now?
Because many people — especially Millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha — are grappling with the collapse of long-standing narratives. Stories we were taught to believe in, like:
Work hard and you’ll succeed.
College equals security.
If you follow the rules, life will be fair.
But millions of people in these generations were taken out at the proverbial knees. The wealthy pay bribes to get unqualified kids into college. Lenders employ predatory interest practices, forcing young people into crippling debt before they ever have a chance to thrive. And home prices continue to soar, alongside the cost of healthcare and childcare.
While this is a gross oversimplification, the crux is that today’s young people are the first generation in American history to feel financially worse off than their parents. This breaks down those core assumptions and degrades the idea that society is progressing forward.
For people who feel trapped in nihilistic thinking, this is the end of the line. We wake up from the American Dream and realize that we are floating on a tiny rock in an impossibly big expanse that is billions of years old, and we start to feel like — in the grand scheme of things — nothing matters.
So if nothing matters — if no foundational truth or story exists in our lives — then why not believe in chicken? At least a chicken won’t promise you a future you can never have.
KFC looked into the void and fried it.
In a way, KFC’s campaign captures this moment well. It stares into that existential vacuum and offers comfort food as a coping mechanism: “If nothing else is worth believing in, believe in chicken.”
It’s a clever concept, but a hollow one. Because instead of acknowledging the complexity of the emotional state it’s tapping into, it trivializes it. It turns a deeply personal philosophical reckoning into a punchline. The problem isn’t that they addressed nihilism. The problem is that they didn’t respect it.
They forgot that there is an experiential quality to life. One way of thinking about this is to imagine putting your hand on a hot stove. You could say that in 100 years or 100 million years, it doesn’t matter whether or not you put your hand on the stove. But in the present moment, it has a dramatic impact on the quality of your lived experience — and your hand!
The real lived experience of nihilism is completely different for each person. One definition — or one ad campaign — will never suffice because nihilism is experienced deep within the self. By contrast, KFC portrays nihilism as a problem that we have to solve. It’s like someone took a puzzle piece out of our soul, and now we just need to fill that empty space with something — with chicken, to be specific.
Instead, I would challenge you to lean into that discomfort. Philosopher Keiji Nishitani calls this the “Great Doubt.” It’s the moment when we question reality beyond the conventions in which we were raised. It’s a necessary (and powerful) part of growing up, waking up and seeing the world clearly.
But “Believe in Chicken” sidesteps that process. It tries to solve the void instead of sitting with it. They slapped a band-aid on a psychological bullet wound. The ad didn’t make me feel more connected to the brand or community at large. It left me feeling empty, yet somehow hungerless.
As marketers, we can do better than that.
That feeling is why I decided to write this article — word by word — for you, the reader. That feeling was the impetus for me to create. That feeling made me want to connect with other humans. In this dawn of AI, we are in real danger of leaving behind the self; of shutting down our centers of critical thought; of treating nothingness as a terrifying physical void rather than as a field of limitless potential. So, how do we as marketers still create meaningful stories in a world where nihilism is undoubtedly on the rise?
It’s not through the alienation of the self or the “puppet-ization” of people. It’s through introspection and authenticity. This is the secret sauce behind some of Hunter’s most effective campaigns. We still subvert expectations, but in a way that brings joy and meaning to experiences where it was otherwise lacking.
Our work with ParkColumbus is a perfect example. The original request from the City of Columbus was for Hunter to do a simple PSA about changes to parking infrastructure. It wasn’t particularly sexy subject matter. But we chose to take a topic that lacked humanity and infuse it with authenticity and meaning.
We were able to improve the experiential quality of life — for our team working on the campaign, for our partners at the City and for the people who were learning how to park in this new system — all by intentionally making the experience fun. Because, in a world where truth and meaning can be hard to find, it becomes a little easier when we feel less alone. Or when we have a “buddy” we can call.
What matters is how we respond to nihilism. Do we pander to it? Capitalize on it? Or do we create space for something honest to emerge? Because marketing is so much more than messaging. It’s meaning-making. And in a world that feels increasingly artificial, real meaning — real connection — is what will cut through the noise.
That’s where KFC got stuck, drowning in gravy. It’s because nihilism is not a villain to be defeated. It’s an invitation to ask bigger questions, to understand the world around us more deeply and to carve out meaning in the most unexpected places.
