In shifting one letter, KFC became FCK, and immediately captured the not only the mood of the whole of the KFC organisation, but also the mood of a nation that apparently until then hadn’t realised how much it wanted what we had to offer.

A deliberately provocative and human response to a crazy problem, backed up with understated, but equally heartfelt body copy that explained a bit more about the situation, and took the opportunity to apologise to both the public, and KFC employees who’d been left in the lurch.

Unlike most empty corporate apologies, we spoke to people on a frank, real, human level. The location of the ad was central to the idea too - it had to be a full page press ad. Because sometimes when you’re responding to the news, you have to behave like (and indeed become) news.

KFC FCK first appeared on 23rd February, in two UK publications - The Sun and Metro. With a combined audience of just over 6 million.

Since then 733 articles have been written about KFC FCK, all carrying the branded image. This delivered an audience of 796,709,795. The commentary was almost uniformly positive, with KFC praised for both the tone and content of the apology.

In social media, KFC FCK was shared to an audience of 219,138,216 - this does not include posts without the branded FCK image; these have not been counted.

That makes the combined reach of KFC FCK by May 2018 1,015,848,011.

The FCK ad is so prolific on the internet, that a reverse image search lists it over 25 billion times (which is absolutely extraordinary, but true).

The week commencing 19th February 2018 was not a great one for KFC. A new logistics partner and delivery problems meant hundreds of their restaurants had to close. It was a huge national news story, and it demanded an equally noteworthy response from KFC.

The apology had to deliver on two levels. It needed to both acknowledge KFC’s responsibility for store closures, and provide transparency in what was being done behind the scenes to fix the issue. But it was also crucial that it felt sincere and believable. The UK general public are no strangers to empty corporate apologies, and this certainly wasn’t the time for one. We needed to be human in how we delivered our apology.

Our solution was to take out a full page press ad in two of the UK’s most read newspapers, and deliver an apology ad that was bold, down-to-earth and human in equal measures.

KFC were hit with a major supply chain issue, resulting in the temporary closure of most of their stores across the UK. As the crisis deepened and became public, it became imperative that KFC issue a statement and take control of the conversation.

Our task was:

· To deliver a mass-scale public apology for the KFC chicken crisis store closings.

· To provide clarity and understanding around what KFC were doing to fix the

issue.