Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2018 | |

How KFC used data to double down McGoliath

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

The Challenges
No Millennial eats burgers at KFC, they’d choose McDonald’s. KFC couldn’t match McGoliath’s 76% SOV. How do we get Millennials to choose our newest ZingerDoubleDownBurger (bunless burger that uses ZingerPattiy as buns with bacon and cheese filling)?

Insight, Strategy and the Idea
With lack of SOV, we had to be BOLD on social for a BOLD burger. Millennials don’t like being advertised to but love getting into conversations with brands. We created the DoubleDownMan, a bold character who loved randomly butting into conversation with GIFs in realtime. GIFs were fast replacing words on social and caught more attention.

Media Execution
Our war room went to work 24 hours a day for a month. Using social listening, we identified buckets of engagement resulting in 25 broad threads. Then we identified 2-3 specific trending topics for DoubleDownMan to butt in with zingy rebuttal GIFs. KFC’s official accounts posted them so it seemed like the brand was hijacking conversations. Like when Afiqah asked if ZingerDoubleDown or McDonald’sSpicyKoreanBurger was better, DoubleDownMan immedietely responded “Try us if you dare” rebuttal GIF. Or when Khairul broke Malaysia’s oldest record in Athletics, DoubleDownMan saluted him with, “You da man”. At some points, we were involved in 15 different conversations all at the same time! We then monitored comment velocity in real time. If it had good engagement, we continued replying. If it wasn’t we moved onto a new conversation.

Results and Effectiveness
1. Hijacked well over 18,000 conversations, involving 7,000 unique profiles and generated 21,000 reaction GIF replies.
2. Social media engagement all time high! 67% increase in conversation volume on social and 37% more positive sentiments than McDonald’s during campaign period.
3. Most successful ZingerDoubleDownBurger run in KFC Malaysia’s history, selling out in just 4 weeks — 2 weeks before the official end date. Exceeded sales of 2012 (+148%) and 2014 (+187%) runs respectively.