Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase
2013 | Gold | Best Use of Integrated Media Campaign
Advertiser: QSR Brands (M) Holdings Sdn Bhd Brand: KFC Malaysia Creative Agency: BBDO (M) Sdn Bhd Credits: Universal McCann — Rina Low (Business Director), Velda Kon (Associate Director), Lavend Ng (Senior Media Planner), Way Chooi Yee (Media Planner), Alina Tan (Media Buyer), Ullas Sahadevan (Director, Performance Marketing), Wilson Chin (Solutions Architect, Performance), Derek Tan (Executive Director), Yvonne Lau (Communication Strategist Manager), Angelyn Soh (Social Media Specialist) / QSR Brands (M) Holdings Sdn Bhd — Kelvin Hong (General Manager), Connie Liau (Senior Marketing Manager), Erica Tan (Marketing Executive), Sharel Samat (Marketing Executive) / Astro Radio Sdn Bhd — Sukhbir Sidhu (Associate Radio Sales)
Challenge
The infamous I-City incident caught the country by storm when one server assaulted a customer. The debacle spread like wildfire. Overnight, KFC was infested with severe negative sentiment and became Malaysia’s hotly debated topic of the year. KFC was in danger of losing not only relevance but also brand equity.
Solution
Not taking any action would have been disastrous. Media agency recommend a fast and multi- dimensional strategy to counter the explosion. We first needed to contain the outbreak, then we needed to build a longer positive green line against the red line and finally we needed to give the proof-of-the-pudding at the heart of the problem, the KFC outlet. Search, Social, POS and Radio had the best mix of speed, context and affinity for each stage.
Execution
We deployed a 3-pronged strategy to CONTAIN the pandemic via a Paid Search campaign, using an interceptor strategy for 4 different audience Search behaviours of ‘Strangers’,’Onlookers’,’Activists’ &’Propagators’. Once intercepted we CO-CREATED positive advocacy in social media by using Facebook to gather ‘SoGood moments’ from them, under 29 different life experience buckets. Once consumers visited the outlet we CONVINCED them by refreshing the positive image of the KFC server, using Malaysian’s favourite radio DJs as KFC frontliners.
Results
KFC turned crisis into opportunity. Sales +19.8%, transaction +15.4% and 0 cannibalization, pushing visit shares increased by 2x in Q2 2012. ‘Staff are friendly’ improvement of 71.4% vs our closest competitor. The place attribute around ‘Warm and welcoming’ improved by 100% vs our closest competitor.
