Showcasing: Advertiser of the Year



2019 | |

Listen, Listen, Listen – An Unheard of Burger!

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
No millennials eat burgers at KFC, they’d rather choose McDonald’s. To court millennials, KFC launched a burger that is unheard of and unique: The WaffleBurger. The question was, how do we build product likeability and drive sales?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
Media stereotypes millennials as ‘lazy’ and ‘vain’ social addicts. To see them beyond the stereotypes, we needed to immerse ourselves into their minds. Since music mirrors the millennials best (2 hours spent daily on Spotify, GlobalWebIndex), we studied their music listening behaviour. Everyday, when millions of millennials fire up their Spotify, they are actually letting us into their real spirits. More than just tracks and playlists, what they listen to is reflective of their raw unconventional personalities hidden beneath their stereotypical identities. We see young, macho guys loving Selena Gomez and coy girls screaming out to Slipknot! These are the outliers who brands have ignored. We chose to talk to them in an unconventional way by tapping into their raw unconventional personalities, with an unconventional product!

Media Execution
Utilizing Spotify’s deep learning algorithms, we built several listener segments with unconventional music tastes, like:
(1) “Gentle” Men: Men who enjoy feminine songs.
(2) Power Women: Ladies who listen to aggressive, metal screamo songs.
(3) Youth With Old Soul: Young people who listen to songs from the past decades. For communication relevance, each genre was served with customized audio ads. With “Gentle” Men, we echoed that female songs aren’t just for women. With Power Women, we supported them to fight conventional labels.
Celebrating their unconventional side through in stream audio and banner ads, each message was tagged with WaffleBurger details and CTA to order it online for delivery.

Results and Effectiveness
Millennials flocked to KFC, stores footfall increased +6%. Campaign awareness with millennials peaked at 81%. CTR increased to 6.3x more than historical benchmarks, proof of our connection with them. Brand likability grew +5%.

2019 | |

Framily Radio Reunions!

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
KFC CelebrationBucket is synonymous with group eating. However, during CNY, our sales suffer due to the rise of hotel buffets and extravagant family dinners. We wanted to bring back the love for the KFC bucket and create a new consumption occasion during CNY for ‘group eating’ outside family events

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
CNY is centered on reunions. And reunions are not just tied to families but also friends who are tight, close like a family… actually, a lot closer than family. The friend you’ll call at 4:00 am with a flat tyre, a friend who finishes your sentences, the friend who will help you hide a dead body. These relationships are beyond what are labelled as friends or family. To create a new consumption occasion, we decided to pay a tribute to the reunion of these friends who are like family = Our Framily!

Media Execution
With the young Chinese always being on the go, radio is the golden medium to connect with them. In collaboration with the top chinese station MYFM: Radio DJs triggered nostalgia by sharing their fond memories of their framilies on air & on social. Each story ended with an invitation for listeners to submit their Framily stories on MYFM’s website. The DJs then selected the top creative tributes on air & shared the most heartwarming Framily stories on air. Needless to say, it was a tsunami of emotions broadcasted stirring the hearts of millions. All this lead to the ‘KFC’s Special Framily Reunion’ open house event, where millions of Framilies were reunited, together with their favourite radio DJs from MYFM. The KFC CelebrationBucket had turned into an icon for Framilies nationwide!

Results and Effectiveness
More than 2.4 million Chinese listeners reached. Top of Mind awareness was +96% higher than McD. Achieved +10% increase in Chinese footfalls, our highest ever store visitation since 2016!

2019 | |

The Only Everything’s Better with the KFC Golden Egg Crunch – even Ad Breaks

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
Come 2018 Chinese New Year (CNY), KFC launched its very own salted egg yolk infused chicken, the Golden Egg Crunch (GEC). However, we were just one among 24 food brands riding the salted egg wave. We set out with the ambitious goal to sell out GEC in 8 weeks in the middle of the most cluttered season.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
A sellout goal demanded an unapologetically high TOM, which meant investing in TV. However, CNY is the season when the fast food category goes ballistic on media. 2017 recorded +377% increase in ad spends! We chose to ‘Outsmart and not Outspend’. Aha: 87% of TV viewers browse their devices as they watch TV. What if we used technology to bridge digital and TV & create a simultaneous experience? What if we delivered a brand message on digital that is connected to what’s playing on TV at the same time? Idea: Cross screen hijack done right, with the right content!

Media Execution
1. We predicted 20 ads that would be popular, by econometrically modeling 10 years of CNY commercials and understanding patterns on budgeting, reach and social conversations.
2. We singled out the memorable part of each of the 20 ads via an algorithm.
3. We created 20 KFC parody videos, each mimicking the popular 20 ads with a GEC twist.
4. Leveraging on TV sync technology when the popular 20 TVCs aired, KFC parody videos were activated on mobile. Example: when Panadol ads played on TV, we deployed Panadol lookalike video on mobile promoting the GEC in real time.

Results and Effectiveness
The GEC sold out in 6 weeks, delivering a 38% sales lift. 2. Visits to KFC increased by 2% when eating out dropped by 5%. 3. Captured 4 million video views that would have cost 1260% more with just TV. 4. McDonald’s responded to our stunt driving even more noise.

2019 | |

The Playable InstaStories

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
Come Ramadan/Raya 2018, KFC launched the ‘Fierce on the Outside, Tender on the inside’ NachosCheezyCrunch(NCC). We wanted to court millennials the ones leaning into the Ayam Goreng McD. However, we faced a double whammy: 1. Millennials dislike ads, they are 10X more likely to skip ads. 2. Neither could we show them the NCC, as during Ramadan brands were not allowed to promote food in the fasting hours.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
We needed a ‘pull strategy’. If there was one channel that these millennials were smitten by, it was Instagram Stories. The fact that Stories disappear after 24 hours resonated with their innate spontaneity. Tactic: Create an experience that distracts and excites when they are on InstaStories. Timing: Activate it exactly when they are online. Introducing Malaysia’s first Instastories game ‘Fierce vs Tender’. The game required millennials to pair with a friend & engage in a tapping spree taking on the Fierce or the Tender side. A fun, tapping tug of war not really showing the NCC yet advertising the NCC. Bingo!

Media Execution
The game starts in the middle of a 25 frame InstaStory series with Tender on one side and Fierce on another side. It pitted players against each other to be the first person to tap the fastest across 10 Instastory frames. As Instagram usage peaked during lunchtime, we created 15s InstaStory ads to encourage clicks to the KFC profile where the game was housed in the Highlights. Simply, users could play the game and upon completion, we asked winners to DM us to redeem a voucher for breaking fast.

Results and Effectiveness
The 24 hours game was a game changer. It did not just set off rage on social with 100,000 game taps & 907% increase in profile visits. We gained 8% in dinner time visitation of which teen incidence grew by 29% and teen visitation surged by 3%.

2019 | |

The Other Sanders

Advertiser: QSR Stores Sdn Bhd
Brand: KFC
Creative Agency: -
Credits: -

The Challenges
It was the best of times, also the worst of times. 2018 was tough for KFC. Visits to KFC grew by a mere 4%, while the category grew at 30%. We were losing relevance, with an audience fed on variety and value. Hence, we needed a branding initiative beyond products and promotions, a spark that would resonate with Malaysians.

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
#1 WOMEN DON’T CHOOSE KFC ANYMORE We deep dived into our sales data to understand where we were losing out and learned that females’ spending with KFC was on a decline, quarter on quarter (Nielsen).
#2 BRANDS (INCLUDING US) WERE STAYING AWAY FROM GLOBAL CONVERSATIONS Conversations on InternationalWomen’sDay recorded a year on year 20% growth on social, but ironically, local brands were reluctant to jump on. The conservatism of a Muslim majority played a dominant role in brands staying away.
The Aha Moment: It wasn’t about feminist fireworks, just a wifely story. Instead of confrontation or ‘lip service’, we opted for a story rooted in our brand and relevant to the cause. Coupled with a ‘dutiful wife’ tonality that would resonate well with the conservative Muslim majority. Introducing the Other Sanders: On InternationalWomen’sDay, KFC’s iconic ColonelSanders logo was replaced with someone the world knew little about; his supportive and inspirational wife, ClaudiaSanders.

Media Execution
Our distribution approach was: social as our primary channel to trigger conversations aplenty. Through a clever swap of profile photos on Facebook and Instagram, we replaced images of ColonelSanders with ClaudiaSanders. Using social listening, we identified InternationalWomen’sDay conversations and against it seeded an introductory video of ClaudiaSanders. Media added fuel to the fire that ClaudiaSanders organically initiated.

Results and Effectiveness
We were back to being the favourite: KFC store visits grew by 13%, TOM shot up by +6%, and conversations grew by +128%. Our story traveled across 54 countries, touching millions and even featuring on JimmyFallon and EllenDeGeneres’ shows.