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:

Food critics have been haunting restaurants since the olden days. But you know what? These days food influencers have the power. So KFC created a restaurant just for them - a Social-first restaurant. A restaurant where every detail was designed specifically for their Social feeds. So it was almost impossible not to share their experience.

To make it happen we took KFC’s products, and with the help of a celebrity chef, created an 11-course degustation menu that looked as good as it tasted #nofilter.

The Social reach that came next is what we dreamed and planned for, but didn’t dare expect. But it happened. Content shot by influencers in our little Social restaurant made its way around the world, appearing in Newsweek and then Jimmy Fallon – leading to a second spike in hype.

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 the only audience that matters when it comes to food reviews these days: food influencers.

Knowing that no one believes KFC when they say their food is high quality, we developed a bold strategy: make KFC’s food look as good as it tastes. We did this by presenting our food in a completely different way: an 11-course degustation.

Partnering with celebrity Australian fine-dining chef Nel Robinson, we created an 11-course degustation menu using KFC products.

Once perfected, we revealed the menu with no paid comms, and opened reservations at $75 per person. Over $3 million in reservations were made in days - selling out the restaurant and making headlines across the country. We wanted influencers to think an invite to our restaurant was a rare, valuable thing. And it worked. Our team were fighting off influencer reservation requests slipping into our DMs for days.

When it came to opening night the restaurant replicated the experience influencers and customers would expect of a fine-dining establishment, complete with pre-drinks, mood lighting, five-star service, wine pairings, and over-the-top presentation of food.

But the main event was feeding the influencers’ feeds. Which worked so well that mainstream media didn’t use our B-roll half the time, they’d grab footage straight from influencers’ feeds.

1. REACH as many Australians as possible

2. With an INFLUENTIAL message

3. Helping change KFC’s food quality PERCEPTIONS

We wanted to reach Australians through influencers’ feeds. But the influencer reach went way beyond that - into national and global mainstream media. 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.

And most importantly Social 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.