Liquid Gold Exchange · KFC New Zealand · Special PR New Zealand · September 2026
Calling a dipping sauce Liquid Gold is easy. KFC decided to do something a bit harder and honour the exchange rate. For two days, its Ponsonby pawnshop accepted almost anything gold—from foil wrappers to questionable dental treasures—and traded it for chicken and Liquid Gold sauce.
The Challenge
A limited-edition sauce is a fairly small launch. It can easily vanish into menu photography and the usual "try it" invitation. KFC wanted Liquid Gold to feel genuinely precious and to give people a reason to taste it first.
The Strategy
Take the product name to its logical extreme. If the sauce really was Liquid Gold, it needed a valuation system, a place of exchange and customers prepared to surrender their treasures for it.
That gave KFC a whole commercial world, not just a line. People could value the sauce by what they were willing to swap for it. And because the exchange was the idea, not an activation bolted onto it, every transaction helped tell the joke.
The Execution
The Colonel’s Liquid Gold Exchange opened at 177 Ponsonby Road, Auckland, on 4 and 5 September. Visitors could swap almost any gold-coloured possession—from a chocolate wrapper to Grandma’s false tooth—for chicken and the new sauce.
PHD Aotearoa extended the idea into media with a street poster carrying removable gold items that could also be redeemed.
Campaigns That Used Similar Tactics
Alternative Currency → Pay With Possessions or Recoverable Value:
Bye-Bye · Transavia and eBay · Les Gaulois Paris · 2014
Transavia and eBay helped people turn unwanted possessions into flights. KFC plays the same move for laughs: the possessions only need to look gold, not fetch it. For two days, cash made way for anything gold-coloured. Actual resale value was beside the point. If the object looked right, it could buy chicken.
Wordplay Metaphors → The Name as the Idea:
Flattened Restaurant · A&W Canada · Rethink · 2026
To launch its Smash Burger, A&W made a Toronto restaurant look as though it had been put through the same press as the burger.
“Liquid Gold” starts as a flattering name for a sauce. KFC asks what would happen if it were literally true. The answer supplies the pawnshop, the payment mechanic and the reason anyone turns up.
The Question That Could Get You There
What would customers do if we treated the product name as fact?
