Summary
KFC offered its platform to its fans so they could share their talents and hobbies with KFC's 312K followers and forever book their place in KFC's highlights in a time when there was no product or restaurant to advertise. Post the lockdown, when people were cooking a lot more,KFC wanted to chip in with its contactless delivery offering and partnered with Influencers, chefs and home-chefs to create simple recipe videos with a KFC twist.
Challenge
2020 was a rough year for everyone. When the nationwide lockdown was announced, KFC restaurants, much like everything else, were forced to shut down. With restrictions on all non essentials, KFC was unable to deliver its signature fried chicken to fans. The brand was facing one of its biggest challenges ever - staying relevant without delivering a single bucket. This was our first challenge. With no product available or restaurant open, advertising was not an option. Hence, we needed to creatively leverage branded content to build salience during this time. Weeks later, restrictions were eased and KFC was back on delivery. But as luck would have it, people were still reluctant to order in, with concerns around the safety of eating out, while at home. And so, this became the second prong of our two-pronged challenge to tackle.
Objective
With this as our backdrop, we had 2 main objectives : Sustain relevance at a time of a nation-wide lockdown with restaurants being shut Build awareness about the deliveries and pick up from KFC
Strategy
Phase 1 : Home Studios In lockdown, people turned to social media as their outlet. They connected, shared, and expressed online, which led to a spike in activity—Instagram showed a 62% increase in average time spent. Fans desperately needed a distraction from all the uncertainty surrounding them. KFC seized the opportunity by redefining its Instagram handle, turning it into a platform for fans to show off their newfound (or resurfaced) talents like acting, singing, dancing, or just plain goofing around. They shared videos, and KFC gave them the spotlight. This created a trail of user-generated content that kept everyone safe at home and even coined a new term - in-tertaiment! Phase 2 : Home Kitchen When KFC became available again with contactless delivery, the brand needed to convey the good news in a way that still drove home the message of safety and matched the flavour of the moment. The timing to introduce KFC Home Kitchen couldn't have been more perfect. The campaign was conceptualised to leverage the trend of growing home chefs marked by a 52% rise in Food & Recipes searches on YouTube. KFC fed the trend by creating simple recipes with the help of multiple influencers,celebrated chefs and home chefs with Kentucky Fried Chicken as the hero ingredient to every dish. These videos needed to be in a very simple, easy to digest format so every fan could bring the KFC twist to their favourite dishes! Each dish was curated to fit an at-home occasion like movie night or Friday night Zoom calls. Fans could even access a cookbook on Instagram highlights and YouTube with all the recipes compiled as inspiration to create their dishes.
Data
Phase 1 : During the lockdown, the brand wanted to know what fans were doing while stuck at home : There was a 62% increase in average time spent on instagram (Source : Financial Express) Fans were also picking up old hobbies, new skills & creating content (Source : Times of India) This data helped us build our first phase successfully by leveraging our platform to connect with the community and give them an opportunity and a platform to showcase their talents in the most KFC way possible. Phase 2 : During the lockdown, there was an increased interest in cooking & a rise of home chefs Data showed that there was a 52% rise in Food & Recipes genre on youtube (Source : Business Insider) This insight led to Home Kitchen. The brand wanted people to include KFC in their home cooking which gave them a sense of safety and enhanced their home cuisine with the flavour of the 11 special herbs and spices from KFC.
Solution
Home Studios : Through a teaser video, KFC announced Home Studios and encouraged fans to turn actor, dancer, director - you name it. Tagging KFC's handle, fans got featured on the page in stories, highlights and feed, turning them into the campaign's stars. Entries started pouring in with influencers getting the ball rolling and then fans taking a cue from them. KFC even created special Home Studios stickers to spice up the videos with the KFC flavour. Home Kitchen : KFC's Instagram page transitioned from Home Studios to Home Kitchen, shifting from entertainment skills to kitchen skills. Using multiple influencers from top chefs to content creators, KFC gave home chefs a renewed zest for home-cooking! These influencers created simple yet delicious recipes using ingredients easily available at home while keeping KFC at each dish's core. Watching these recipes at home, fans started creating their own KFC dishes and sharing them as part of the Home Kitchen cookbook.
Results
KFC successfully created relevance amongst its community even without its fried chicken! The brand got over 1000+ entries, 40 Mn+ impressions 32K+ profile visits in it's first phase Phase 2 : Home Kitchen Home kitchen understood the need for "interesting home cooked meals" and hence became a huge success KFC saw a 70% increase in brand recall 13 Mn impressions 2 Mn engagement 12k saved posts And if that wasn't enough to satiate us, KFC Home Series got Published too! The series was recognized and talked about by Business Insider, restaurantsindia.in, Adgully, Exchange 4 Media and many more! And if that's not finger-lickin' good, we don't know what is.
