Australia’s music scene had been suffering long before the pandemic. Before lockdowns, we had lockouts – government-imposed regulations that were ruining Australia’s nightlife.

Aussie musicians had done a lot for KFC over the years, giving us tracks for our ads and festivals to be a part of. Our brief was to connect with young Australians in a way that was relevant to them, so what better way to do that than a music festival to support Australia’s dying music scene?

Our objectives were:

1. Reach as many Australians as possible

Our aim was to get our live music event out to as many people across the nation as possible.

2. Awareness on a large scale

Get more Australian’s engaging with local artists and listening to their newly released music live.

3. Build engagement

Build the association between our food, new menu items and popular musicians and influencers in the country.

They’d said “no music festivals”, so we cheekily put on a food festival instead. We used our food to lure people in to Feastival to rediscover live music again.

We headlined electronic duo, Peking Duk and put on three Aussie supporting acts. But as a food festival, we teamed up with the band to create the exclusive Peking Cluk Burger, which was only available at the event. The burger captured the attention of the nation and got people flocking to the event to try it – stumbling across some live music in the process.

Through our food and our reach as a brand, we gave Aussie artists the means and the audience to perform live to, after so many of their shows had been cancelled.

Youth is at the core of the music strategy and through live music, KFC were able to successfully tap into youth culture, free-spiritedness and food. The feeling that music provides, especially at festivals, was the perfect alignment to our ‘free-spirited’ brand narrative.

Our demographic was 18-24 year-olds, as this group love music and everything that it gives them: escapism, connection with friends and allowing them to be uninhibited and unapologetically themselves.

We knew who to reach, but how to reach them was next, and earned media was the answer. But we couldn’t just announce we were throwing a gig, we had to tap into Aussie culture and create headlines, as well as urgency and excitement amongst our target audience.

So when live music was in jeopardy, we used our food as a way of engaging our youth audience to enable them to enjoy everything they love about live music.

Because we were showing up in music, we needed to be authentic. So we created street posters that you’d see for a typical gig and placed them up all over Sydney. We seeded content in the music space, with Spotify ads using the members of Peking Duk as the voice over, keeping the band at the heart of everything we did.

We found a fitting ‘bird themed’ venue, an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour. Cockatoo Island was the perfect venue for people to escape from the highly regulated inner-city venues.

And finally, we got three other Aussie artists on board as support acts. With a total combined social following of 534.1k and 1.5m monthly Spotify listeners, we were able to drive ticket sales even further and had thousands of people attending the gig (I mean food festival).

Impact: 207 pieces of earned coverage

The release of the Peking Cluk Burger picked up 207 pieces of earned coverage across Australia.

Reach and engagement: Over 109 million impressions

The event reached capacity with 1,250 people attending. We also had over 109 million views of our content, putting our artists’ names back into people’s minds.

100% positive sentiment

All media coverage generated around the festival was positive in tone and attitude.

Increased brand buzz

In the week of the music festival KFC’s brand buzz hit an all-time high and shot up to a rate of 19.3, the second highest in the entire category.

Reversed the decline of live music

It was no Coachella, but our event brought music to people’s ears at a time they needed their spirits lifted and it was the start of Australians enjoying live music once again.