Chicken Licken is a small fried chicken fast-food chain in South Africa. Our biggest competitor, KFC, is still referred to as ‘Kentucky. If we could get Kentucky talking, our local audience would understand our tongue-in-cheek poke at KFC. In addition, comparative advertising is banned in SA, so we cannot simply compare ourselves to KFC, we have to find other ways to challenge our competitors and get South Africans talking.

The brief was simple; create talkability for Chicken Licken’s Easybucks meals in the social media space. Furthermore, focus specifically on the affordability of these meals.

The objective was to get people in Kentucky talking about the EasyBucks meals, then capture their reactions and produce an online film. This film was aimed at our audience back home, who immediately understood our tongue-in-cheek poke at KFC. This in turn got our local audience talking about Chicken Licken.

We put up a billboard in the heart of downtown Kentucky, USA, with our low price converted to dollars - a ridiculously low $1.60. This got Kentuckians talking and very keen to try Chicken Licken. Disappointed they couldn’t get it in Kentucky, they were pleasantly surprised when we gave them each a meal to try, and they loved it! We documented these locals’ reactions to our activation in order to create an online film to prove to our audience back home that ‘Everyone’s talking about Chicken Licken. Even Kentucky.’ The film got our audience back home talking about us too.

After a successful integrated campaign that got the whole of South Africa talking, we wanted to take it one step further and get our biggest competitor, KFC, talking about our meals. But with comparative advertising banned in South Africa, we couldn’t go head-to-head with them in an obvious way. So we found a way around it using the insight that in our country, the locals still call KFC, “Kentucky”. Thus if we could get Kentucky talking, we could achieve our objective. The online film showed how we got everyone talking, even Kentucky. In doing so, it was instantly recognised by our local target market, these being our mass-market, age 18 - 35, LSM 6-8, as a tongue-in-cheek poke at KFC.

The work ran on one billboard in downtown Kentucky on a main road to ensure maximum foot and road traffic. The particular site was 10”5’ x 22”8’ feet (3x6m) in size and was placed within 2 blocks of a main live entertainment complex, thus many restaurants and retailers nearby. The billboard flighted from 24 February – 1st March 2020.

•One simple billboard garnered over 1 million online views through our film.

•1 020 445 impressions

•803 875 total video views

•According to client’s internal sales data, total sales across the business grew

by 15% in the first month of the campaign.

•During the course of this campaign, South Africa went into a severe lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in the restaurant and take-away trade being halted (the latter for just over 2 months). Despite this loss of trade, the sale of products advertised within the campaign still delivered positive growth compared to the previous year, despite not being able to trade for a week.

•Our return on investment was 31:1.