Towards the end of last year, with winter on the horizon, KFC and creative agency Mother launched a multi-channel campaign to get KFC Delivery on people’s minds when enjoying those cosy nights in.
With the temperature dropping and the idea of leaving the sofa becoming a little less appealing, KFC wanted to convince the nation that there was no more comforting prospect than having a ‘bucket of delicious fried chicken delivered right to your doorstep’.
Mother’s humorous campaign not only included TV spots – depicting couples eating chicken in their pants – but also featured sponsorship idents for ITV’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2022, as well as bespoke out-of-home (OOH) ads and a pop-up pub in Hammersmith London.
The World Cup idents all depicted people rushing home to catch the football with KFC bag in hand, bossing the tagline: ‘And that’s why there’s KFC Delivery’.
“We tell people to make themselves comfortable when in our restaurants, but in reality, there’s no place like home,” said KFC UKI chief marketing officer, Jack Hinchliffe at the time.
The fast-food giant and London-based agency also hijacked other brands’ OOH ads, with digivans and print ads appearing next to brands that can be neatly associated with KFC Delivery. In one example, the brand targeted PlayStation’s launch of God of War: Ragnarok.
Marketing Beat talks Mother’s head of strategy Neasa McGuinness to unwrap the innovative strategy behind its recent work.
What inspired the campaign?
McGuinness believes that KFC was slightly late to the party on fast-food delivery campaigns.
“McDonald’s and other competitors have done loads of advertising,” she says. “McDonald’s came to mind really readily when people wanted to get a takeaway delivery and KFC needed to catch up on that.”
Mother wanted KFC to stand out from the crowd with its food delivery message, ensuring that the ad would not get “mixed up with all the millions of other delivery ads.”
“They all just start blending into one,” McGuinness says. “They typically involve a delivery person with a bag coming up to someone sitting on a sofa. At the same time, our campaign needed to be really obviously delivery as we didn’t want people to think that they were seeing a generic KFC ad because the chicken sells itself.
“When we came up with this idea we focused on the reasons why a KFC at home is the only thing better than a KFC. You can have it in your underwear, or in the jacuzzi, or you can put your feet on the table. It’s a really simple insight but it allowed us to avoid the obvious cliches of the delivery category.”
How successful was the campaign?
Though the FIFA Qatar World Cup proved to be controversial, it also provided brands and advertisers with a surplus of campaign impressions. According to McGuinness, search traffic completely spiked for KFC delivery, while the World Cup campaign was running.
“Immediately, we got this big burst of awareness. KFC Delivery suddenly made it top of people’s minds again.”
The contextual side of the campaign – which saw OOH ads for KFC strategically placed next to ads promoting brands that would most likely be enjoyed at home – also received impressions online.
“The Playstation God of War hijacking got a lot of chatter on social media and a lot of good coverage on marketing and consumer press publications.”
While McGuinness recognises the success of the campaign, she also feels that it is only “the start of a journey”.
“KFC is years behind advertising delivery compared to someone like McDonald’s. So this is a setting at our stools, setting out a positioning. It’ll be an ongoing thing that we just need to reinforce with people because it’s a new message and it’s a new perception that takes time to build.”
Working with KFC
Mother started working with KFC five years ago and has built an honest and close relationship over that time.
“I know it’s a bit of a cliche to say we work as partners but we genuinely do with KFC. They’re really ambitious and they share our creative ambitions. You need those champions inside of client business to push great ideas through.”
McGuinness admits that the amount of input KFC has on a Mother-led campaign depends on the level of strategy.
“In terms of high-level strategy, the KFC marketing department have to come up with a plan for the whole year, which will probably be rooted in a business strategy. They’ll think about their marketing priorities, mainly delivery, value and food perceptions. They will also think about who they’re trying to target, where growth is going to come from, and messaging in general.”
When it comes to Mother, McGuinness affirms that the agency is focused on campaign strategy.
“We know for this case the brief is delivery,” she adds. “What’s the best angle on the message we want to get across? What will make it different to the brand’s competitors? Is there a really interesting insight we can play into it to make it a more interesting campaign?”
The independent firm also partners with the chicken chain on longer-term brand strategy, analysing how campaigns will fit into the bigger picture of the brand’s perception in years to come.
Strategy and the creative process
When asked how Mother in particular functions as an agency, McGuinness responded by stating that “different agencies work in different ways”.
“Some agencies are a bit more linear in that they have a strategy phase and then a creative phase, but Mother is a very fluid place. From the very start of a project, creatives and strategists are briefed and everyone involved will be talking about it together.
“In general, the strategist is very involved in shaping ideas, as well as the creative director. There are people who are leading the responsibility at certain stages, but we work as one team together.”
In terms of short term crisis – like that of the cost-of-living or Covid 19 – and how they affect campaigns, McGuinness believes that long-term brand strategy helps you navigate bumps in the road.
“Your long-term brand strategy should be pretty consistent unless something has threatened to change your positioning in the market. What might change is your campaign strategy or the tactics that you’re using at that point but overall, you’re still trying to get to the same destination in people’s minds.”
Audience
Generation Z has been branded as mistrusting of advertising in recent times. Many brands have attempted to win the audience over by creating targeted campaigns. Mother, however rarely produces campaigns that “narrowly target just one audience.”
“I would say mistrust of advertising and brands is widespread and most people are sceptical of brands,” McGuinness says. “I think trust has been declining across all audiences.
“When it comes to KFC we try and always just be as truthful as possible. The filter we use internally when shaping messaging is always: is this bullshit? Do people care about this? Can we support this? We don’t over promise. We try and keep it quite rooted in what we know to be true, which is often the food.”
Provocative advertising can also turn people off a brand. KFC’s depiction of people eating chicken with no trousers on could fall into this category. McGuinness believes that you must balance provocative advertising out, from an image perspective, to ensure that people are not turned off a brand.
She added that: “brands that usually turn people off with their advertising are talking to people who will not lose interest. So if the brand alienates most people there is still a portion that will find the campaign funny or interesting”.
Goals as an agency
Mother’s head of strategy says that essentially everything follows on from the agency simply always doing “the best creative work that we possibly can”.
“Everything else ladders up to that,” she concludes.
“We also create an interesting, innovative, exciting, supportive place for people to work and build a career, especially as we head into economic strife. We want a support network around our people, because no one’s going to do their best work if they’re petrified of something or frightened about losing their job.”
