How do you get 41% of Australians to say a campaign improved their quality perceptions of a fast food restaurant?

You get food critics to become your ambassadors. By creating a safe space - a fine dining restaurant - where they can finally be free to say they like KFC. And it worked.

Being part of the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) category means KFC consistently needs to battle the category stigma of producing nothing more than low-quality food.

Yet here’s the thing: KFC’s food actually IS high quality. It’s made fresh and by hand each day, with chicken supplied from the same people who supply to restaurants all around the country.

However, getting consumers to know this is a brutal challenge; mainly because they don’t believe us when we say KFC is good quality.

If more Australians changed their perceptions about KFC’s food , it would lead to long-term growth for the business. So the campaign objectives were pretty straight forward:

1. REACH as many Australians as possible

2. With a believable and INFLUENTIAL message

3. To help change Australians’ PERCEPTIONS of KFC’s food quality

Kentucky Fried Chicken Degustation:

We enhanced the food quality perceptions of KFC in Australia by building an unbelievable earned story. One so unbelievable that food publications that would never usually mention fast food, actually DID cover this story.

We achieved this by providing Australia’s most discerning, respected, and influential food critics with a safe space to admit they like KFC, and say it’s good quality food.

We took KFC’s products, and with the help of a celebrity chef, created an 11-course degustation menu. Then we built and opened a fine dining restaurant from scratch that was open to public reservations for a limited time.

The object of our earned story proved that the only difference in quality between Kentucky Fried Chicken and a fine-dining restaurant, is an over-the-top, theatrical, fancy and ultimately superfluous experience.

Oh, and matching wines.

It may surprise you to know that KFC actually is high quality food. But don’t worry, you’re not alone – hardly anyone thinks it is.

Yet if more people knew it was high quality food, more people would eat it.

So we decided to target an audience of people who would never in a million years say that KFC actually was high quality. The gatekeepers and influencers of what’s quality when it comes to food in Australia: food critics.

Knowing that no one believes KFC when they say their food is high quality, we developed a bold strategy: take the most cynical, anti-KFC audience and convert them into public advocates for KFC’s quality. We did this by presenting our food in a completely different way, yet one food critics were used to: an 11 course degustation.

Partnering with celebrity Australian fine-dining chef Nel Robinson, we created an 11-course degustation menu using KFC products. And yes, the 11 courses were a cheeky nod to KFC’s 11 secret herbs and spices.

Once perfected, we revealed the menu to the country (with no paid comms), along with asking for reservations - at $75 a sitting per person - for Australians to come enjoy the degustation at a restaurant we built from scratch, with two sittings each day.

The restaurant replicated the experience customers would expect of a fine-dining establishment, complete with pre-drinks, mood lighting, five-star service, wine pairings, theatrical reveals, and over-the-top presentation of food. With a few cheeky KFC-style flourishes to keep it from being too serious and off-brand.

Mainstream earned media coverage created awareness, and a special critic and influencer seating on opening night ensured the ‘quality’ message was heard loud and nation-wide.

1. REACH as many Australians as possible

2. With an INFLUENTIAL message

3. Helping change KFC’s food quality PERCEPTIONS

REACH:

KFC’s most successful food quality campaign - the award-winning Michelin Impossible - achieved 564 pieces of media coverage and 662 million impressions.

Degustation obliterated those results, achieving a mind-blowing 1,372 pieces of coverage and over 1.24 billion impressions!

When reservations went public, “KFC Degustation” was the 4th trending search on Google. And 3rd three weeks later, when our restaurant opened.

INFLUENCE:

To be influential on quality perceptions, reach had to come from food publications. And critics who NEVER usually mention KFC covered Degustation, and loved it.

127 ‘foodie’ publications raved about KFC’s high-quality food, with a stunning 99.2% of the coverage being positive.

PERCEPTIONS:

The reach and influence had the desired impact: post-campaign research revealed an incredible 41% of respondents said ‘KFC Degustation’ improved their perceptions of KFC’s food quality.