In the hypercompetitive world of quick service restaurants (QSRs), December is a critical last chance to close sales by taking advantage of consumers’ festive mood and generous appetites.

By leveraging on our data insights, it was the perfect opportunity for KFC to differentiate itself and gain a sales edge over competitors. By executing a full-funnel campaign with on ground-activation, KFC aimed to boost brand equity, unaided awareness and consideration, while driving measurable online and offline sales.

To generate the impact that we wanted, we knew we had to do something drastically different that would make heads turn. We utilised our online-to-offline capabilities - a full funnel online-to-offline campaign that spanned the whole of our app’s ecosystem, from in-app to in real life.

We also wanted to reignite OOH advertising as COVID-19 restrictions eased Our creative idea thus involved making a lasting impression on consumers by using street guerilla marketing, in addition to taking advantage of technological innovations within the app.

Food purchases that happen within our app enabled us to measure real purchases and thereby understand our impact on real world sales. The ability to make meaningful measurements was crucial in helping us determine a more streamlined target audience. Along with powerful first party data insights informed by millions of real transactions within our app, we were able to identify our target audiences as high-value consumers most likely to purchase KFC, namely existing KFC customers, fried chicken and fast food lovers.

As we wanted to evoke brand recall and tantalization to a wide reach of people, we decided to employ street guerilla marketing. We were determined to drive publicity of the brand and evoke surprise to consumers and potential customers.

We got 150 food delivery riders to dress up as “Colonels” - custom uniforms that evoked the iconic Colonel Sanders - to make a more lasting impression on consumers and attract potential customers. Private car hailing services under us were also wrapped with complementary branding. This mobile OOH fleet roamed the roads for a whole month, driving awareness and recency among Malaysians.

We also made use of user location data on our platform by targeting in-app ads at customers who were within a 10km radius of the restuarant. By focusing on customers within the delivery range of physical stores, it helped eliminate ad wastage. Ads also appeared at three critical points across the online customer journey - when targeted users open their app to browse food or groceries, while they are waiting for their food to arrive and while they are waiting for their food to arrive.

The month-long omnichannel campaign boosted online sales revenue, driving a 5.9X return on ad spend (ROAS) as measured by the orders on our app. The campaign also delivered more than 38 million impressions, with more than 760k unique reach, and a 2.8% click-through-rate.

The brand’s on-ground presence was further amplified with the street guerilla marketing campaign, making heads turn wherever they went. The mobility function of the riders and cars meant more brand visibility everywhere they went.

Additionally, this campaign opened up opportunities for more meaningful connections as more conversations were sparked between delivery riders and consumers, bringing smiles and joy to people in the community. Such customer engagement helped consumers have positive experiences and associations with the brand.