Having visited the US I can understand the negative reaction from the American Negro cultural group in the US population who have battled racism for some 200 years or more. The advertisement was intended for the Australian market and was aimed at Cricket fans (to the US readers - no not the insect that funny game Aussies play for days on end and may not even produce a result). As KFC states their Australian marketing division never considered that the advertisement would be seen outside of Australia.  This demonstrates that in today’s Globalised environment consideration needs to be given to the multiple Geographic and Cultural locations that may be exposed to media messages including Advertisements.
The US has enough enemies in the world without isolating a long-term mate such as Australia over a minor cultural misunderstanding. The US population must realise that some parts of their culture is offensive in Australia, as an example, several years ago a well known US actor in an interview on TV said the words “… my hogs were rooting around in the garden.” The US actor could not understand the reaction of the Australian audience until it was explained that the word “root” means fornication in Australian English. Let’s just understand that as close as the two cultures are differences do exist, but we should not allow these differences to damage a long-term mateship.