We didn’t make an ad, we crafted an open-ended story starring one underdog’s impossible mission to get KFC a Michelin Star.

This 360 campaign played in real-time. With multiple carefully scripted endings. But it began with a local radio appearance and Facebook Group. Soon snowballing into a pop culture experience with hundreds of news articles and interviews in Australia and around the world.

From the outside it looked like an actual KFC franchisee’s random and entertaining journey to a Michelin Star. Which was only made possible by media, advertising, PR, and client genuinely working as a team for five months.

Despite being known for making great-tasting fried chicken, KFC Australia has consistently battled perceptions of low food quality. Consumers gave KFC credit for making delicious food, but not necessarily for making good quality food.

The campaign objectives were:

1. REACH as many Australians as possible:

Achieve 51 pieces of local media coverage with 21 million+ impressions.

2. CHANGE PERCEPTIONS about KFC’s food quality:

Achieve a score of 50% of respondents agreeing with the following statements, post the campaign:

• “it improved my perceptions of the quality of KFC’s food”

• “it makes me feel better about eating KFC”

• “it makes me crave the food more”

3. INCREASE SALES during the campaign period:

The category was growing at 3.7%, and we wanted to outstrip it.

We gave KFC's most isolated and remote store owner a mission to get Kentucky Fried Chicken the ultimate symbol of food quality: a Michelin Star.

There’s no higher accolade of quality in the food world than getting a Michelin Star. But Michelin hasn’t placed Australia on its culinary map yet, let alone any mainstream fast food chain.

The idea wasn’t actually about getting KFC a Star, but getting credit for making quality fried chicken - by associating ourselves with the well-known culinary prestige and status of the Michelin Guide.

But we needed to do this in a credible way.

Aussies love an underdog story. So we developed a 360° experience starring Sam Edelman, a charismatic KFC store owner that Australia would want to get behind. He was incredibly passionate about his restaurant and genuinely believed his fried chicken deserved a Michelin Star. You could say he was our Crocodile Dundee.

Independent research identified that simply reminding people that the letters KFC stood for ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’ immediately improved perceptions of food quality. By referring to KFC’s chicken as Kentucky Fried Chicken, it conjured up notions of “care”, “authenticity” and “expertise”.

So the team needed to find a credible way to get this new (but old) brand name out there.

Yet a traditional campaign that just told people that KFC is short for Kentucky Fried Chicken was going to be a bit banal, and potentially KFC just talking to itself. We needed to do something crazy enough that Aussies would actually take notice of.

So the campaign’s bold strategy was to ditch traditional advertising, and instead associate KFC with an independent symbol of food quality – the Michelin Guide – leveraging its credibility and influence to get Kentucky Fried Chicken the quality kudos it deserved.

We devised a carefully crafted narrative coupled with meticulously planned comms, earned media strategies, and back-up plans, to ensure our mission would be accepted and embraced by the Australian public.

Authenticity was crucial. So even though the initial content was scripted and shot weeks before launch, the mission played out in real-time via a Facebook Group. The Facebook Group effectively became the content hub of the campaign, enabling us to vastly increase the reach of the story in real time through earned media.

We prepared dozens of potential narratives for Sam, along with contingency plans, including: what would happen if Sam knocked on the doors of Michelin HQ in Paris, uninvited?

After a global swell of support for Sam we did exactly that, scoring a highly unlikely meeting with the International Director of Michelin Guide. And we had a crew ready to capture the moment in Paris.

1. REACH as many Australians as possible:

The campaign generated:

• 564 pieces of media coverage (target: 51)

• 662,545,320 impressions (target: 21,255,000)

The global audience increased our results to 724 pieces of media, with a reach of 850 million impressions.

2. CHANGE PERCEPTIONS about KFC’s food quality:

Post-campaign research showed increased positive perceptions about our food quality above our KPI of 50%:

• 65% agreed “it improved my perceptions of the quality of KFC’s food

• 59% agreed “it makes me feel better about eating KFC”

• 68% agreed “it makes me crave the food more”

Sales results below in confidential information section.