2013 highly commended: KFC, Social Media Marketing - case study

This is a case study about how KFC got an audience to listen when they were ignoring new product news. And then prompted reconsideration of a brand firmly pegged as ‘Fried Chicken’.

KFC had been losing share among young women for several years and the brand was seen as a ‘guilty pleasure’. KFC was ‘Fried Chicken’ and women were ignoring news from the brand – like the lighter menu range, high-quality Red Tractor-certified chicken and environmental programmes.

To get their attention, we built on guilty pleasures themselves. When it comes to food, guilty pleasures are called pleasures for a reason. And all women know there are times when calories just ‘don’t count’. Like…if it’s your birthday. If it’s Friday. If you’re thinking about going to the gym (or just wearing gym gear).

We joined the online conversation with an unbranded video starring young British comedian Jenny Bede. The video’s job was to grab attention and get an instant reaction from young women, driving them to Facebook to engage and discover more.

Grilled chicken from the fried chicken brand

Once young women clicked through, we revealed the KFC brand and landed the message that KFC has a range of lighter choices for all the times it does count: linked to the web site, featuring the full range of reasons to reconsider the brand.

The campaign launched September 24, 2012, with YouTube video ads for the first two weeks.

The unbranded ‘It Doesn’t Count If…’ video received over one million views in two weeks, becoming the most-shared online video from a UK brand. This translated into well over a million branded impressions for KFC.

Young women who saw the campaign were almost three times as likely to visit KFC as those who did not, giving KFC an ROI of 13:1 against every £1 of marketing spend.

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