Ogilvy Australia

Client: KFC
Product: Fast Food
Title: Weddings
Media: Print
Country: Australia
Date Of Campaign: 7 Sep 2019 – 4 March 2020

Background: KFC’s ambition is to be the ‘King of Treats’. Problem is, as much as people love our food, many remain slightly embarrassed to be seen eating it in public, or carrying our branded bags around. It’s called ‘bag shame’.So our job was to help Australians overcome this shame, and normalise eating KFC.The objective was to reach as many Australians as possible, and show them that eating KFC is nothing to be ashamed of. That you could even be proud to be seen eating it in public.We’d noticed a social behaviour in Australia of couples and bridal parties stopping off at KFC to eat between the wedding ceremony and reception. This was a behaviour we knew was perfect to leverage to help us normalise eating KFC and helping overcome the issue of 'bag shame'.

Idea: Our strategy was to reach as many Australians as possible through PR and earned media. The mass exposure would help us make eating KFC more permissible by normalising it and creating the belief that it was perfectly fine to be seen publicly devouring our chicken - without fear of judgement - because everyone appeared to be doing it.To do that, we needed to be seen as a natural part of Aussies' lives. And there is no more public day in people’s lives than their wedding day . . . So we launched ‘KFC Weddings’.The full-service wedding offering giving Aussies the chance to have the most public day of their lives fully themed and catered with KFC.We launched with a print ad somewhere place no one would expect to see KFC, but somewhere brides and grooms wouldn’t miss us - the glossy, high-end fashion pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar Bridal Edition.The ad drove chicken loving lovers to the KFC Weddings website where they could apply to have a themed, fully catered KFC wedding experience. Which they did in droves.It proved to be a print ad that got Australia - and the world – talking, along with the entries flooding in. On 29th Feb 2020, we held the world’s first official KFC Wedding in Queensland with Kate and Harry saying “I Do”. Paul and Sam in Melbourne exchanged vows a week later.Each new wedding sparked another wave of earned media for KFC, further normalising the behaviour of eating our delicious fried chicken.

Results: The campaign resulted in over 2160 PR stories, reaching a whopping 1.2 billion people (not bad for a country of just 24 million) and helping achieve a sales growth of 5.3%. But most importantly, making Aussies feel better about eating KFC in public.