The Background
After eight years of steady decline in transactions (sales volume) and sales value in Ireland, KFC was seeking a story of redemption. However, they needed to increase consideration and sales with a tenth of the budget of the category Goliath. When you can’t outshout, you need to outsmart.
This campaign was shortlisted in the Best Use of Innovation category at the 2024 TAMI Awards
The Challenge
The KFC business experienced eight consecutive years of declining sales. All of this was happening at a time when the overall category (excluding 2020/Covid) was growing by an average of 5% YoY.
The clear objective was to return the brand to growth, regaining the appetite and love of Irish consumers for the KFC brand
The Strategy
To get back to growth, KFC needed to grow consideration among the light category buyers. The brand was disappearing out of sight and mind, losing relevance and mental availability. Spark Foundry interrogated two years of data across both transactions (volume of individual sales) and ticket (value of those sales) for every week of the year and then plotted the brand’s communications activity and contrasted it with the same competitor data. The findings pointed us towards the
required actions:
1. Whenever TV was used, there was a significant uplift in sales performance.
2. Running a Brand Message in tandem with a product/value message had a significant impact on transaction growth
3. Maximising frequency early in the promotional window had a positive impact on transactions
In-depth qualitative research showed that the market had moved on and the allure of the brand’s previous ‘American Glamour’ had faded. There was also further evidence to suggest the people felt that KFC was a guiltier/unhealthier choice than others. Spark Foundry needed an approach that would focus on consistently using AV to build mental availability alongside an innovative approach to AV that would deliver sustained performance changes not just blips of uplifts with bursts of TV.
The strategy was to use media, and in particular AV, to outsmart the market rather than outshout, by:
– WINNING NEW AUDIENCES: by developing a piece of segmentation to identify both influential channels and media
behaviours among light category buyers.
– WINNING MORE CONSIDERATION: by allocating budget against tactical and long-term investment and creating an AV mix that would allow a sustained and consistent presence on the big screen, allowing small budgets to work harder and go further for the brand.
– WINNING THE CONVERSATION: by identifying the cultural moments that help make the brand more relevant to Irish audiences.
The Plan
In 2022, the first ever Irish brand campaign was launched ‘It’s got to be KFC’. This brand copy had incredible cut-through and recall after just four weeks. Spark Foundry knew using it consistently would act as a multiplier for success. To go beyond burst, Spark Foundry built an always-on buy to showcase this asset in 2023. They used broadcast sponsorship to show up in the two biggest sporting events, the FIFA and Rugby World Cups.
Research highlighted a guilt associated with KFC and a lack of understanding of the menu. They needed to educate audiences about the product range. Enter ‘Twister Wrap of the Day’, which offered a key role in moving brand perception. TV acted as the lead channel to build those long-term memory structures.
The Results
Since this strategy has launched, KFC have gone from one or two bursts of TV a year to an always-on TV approach using a combination of burst, programming strands, Connected TV, and programming sponsorship. The budget for AV has increased by 231% from 2021 and continued into 2023.
The highlight of this bespoke and innovative AV-first approach have been:
- The best ever week of sales KFC has had in Ireland during thr Brand campaign +42%.
- Spontaneous awareness of KFC has increased to 44% post World Cup (from 38% before brand campaign).
- KFC’s Twister Wrap of the Day has exceeded all benchmarks for transactions by 121%.
- Christmas Sales/ Delivery saw 16% growth during the World Cup performance.
- KFC outperformed McDonalds during the World Cup on the back of our AV Strategy. More people associated KFC with World Cup – even though McDonalds was an actual sponsor.
- Over 300,000 more people eating KFC.
- A brand for “people like me” and modernity scores deliver significant increases ahead of business objectives across all categories. +9PP for a brand like me and +8PP for modernity
- The target to return to sustained growth by 2025 was achieved in 2023- two years ahead of schedule.
“Spark have been instrumental in transforming our approach to AV, a key channel for KFC, making our smaller budgets work harder and smarter to drive real business results in the competitive Irish market. They excel at identifying the right opportunities for KFC to show up authentically in Irish culture, such as the RWC sponsorship, and combine this with clever use of data and audience insight which has resulted in 300k people who weren’t eating KFC in ROI two years ago who are now and also a significant shift in our brand metrics. We are delighted with how Spark have evolved our AV planning and
excited to see where this will take us next!”
Jennifer Shires, Media Manager KFC UKI
Credits
Brand:
KFC
Media Agency:
Spark Foundry
Supporting agencies/teams:
Core
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist: Best Use of Innovation 2024