Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2021 | |

How KFC trolled their way into the stomachs of competitors via geo fencing

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

167_FINALIST_EC4_KFCHOTNCHEEZY

Objective & Challenge
When people think of KFC they only think of the aromatic, tender, crispy fried chicken. KFC was going to release a Hot n Cheezy burger for their limited time offering. So how do we get people to think of KFC as more than fried chicken and to ultimately try their equally enjoyable burger?

Insight & Strategy
When it comes to burgers, our audience are usually having a McDonald’s, Burger King, and others. So we decided to hijack their burger eating moment, and make it a little more Hot N Cheezy. We turned our competitor’s products into media real estate because according to Nielsen, 65% of Malaysians are still on their smartphones while eating! By scanning the competitor’s burger wrappers, the consumer would be directed to a cheeky music video that poked fun at the competitor, and prompted viewers to try out a Hot and Cheezy. Why music? Studies have also shown that you enjoy your food a lot more when there’s music playing in the background.

Execution
The KFC Hot and Cheezy campaign is designed to be a digital first campaign with offline crossovers by geotargeting visitors of other fastfood establishments. They’re then funneled through KFC social ads and image recognition banners that leads them to a burger wrapper scanner. This is made possible with our advertising solutions partner, Amobee who developed the image scanning technology to embedd in our interactive display ads. They would then scan their nonKFC burger wrappers with their phones, which would then play a unique troll song based on the competitor brand that was scanned. All songs end with a delivery promo code for users to try the new burger from KFC. Some of the songs include “Burger King Burger Queen” (based on ABBA’s Dancing Queen), “Texas Chicken Cheese drives me crazy” (based on Fine Young Cannibal’s She Drives me crazy), “Carl’s Junior Uptown Cheese” (Based on Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl), and we even had some local songs too like “Ramly Kau Burgerku” (based on Man Bai’s Kau Ilhamku). Basically every fast food burger restaurant had a parody song created for them. This meant that for three weeks whenever someone ate a burger that wasn’t from KFC, the Hot and Cheezy songs was still on the top of their minds. A real world example: Ahmad is eating a burger at McDonald’s. He scrolls his phone while eating and sees our Hot n Cheezy burger asking him to scan his McDonald’s wrapper in a display ad. Ahmad scans the wrapper and is then shown a music video called, “Return the Mac”, a parody song based on hit song “Return of the Mack” by Mark Morrison. Ahmad is then given a delivery promo code to try the new Hot and Cheezy burger.

Effectiveness
KFC surpassed their KPI benchmarks for selling the Hot n Cheezy Burger. 1. Sales for the Hot n Cheezy burger surpassed target and we had to cut our campaign from 6 weeks to 3 weeks because we had no more burgers to sell via delivery (a limited time offer as the name suggests has only a limited number of units per distribution channel). 2. It garnered 326,000 clicks throughout three weeks, which led to an 84% conversion rate to KFC Delivery site. 3. Received 16.5 million social impressions 4. Reached a 2.8% CTR on Facebook from a starting benchmark of 1% 5. Gained a 33.2% success rate on Youtube VTR with benchmark of 20% 6. Aside from the campaign making noise in Malaysia and Southeast Asia it also attracted attention from worldwide publications like La Reclame from France and marketing, media, advertising and technology show Melt from India.