The national personality of Australia has traditionally been cheeky and irreverent. Yet we’ve rapidly become a more conservative culture. Australians are mourning the death of our free spirit and national sense of humour, as we increasingly become “a nanny state”.

Most brands reflect this and are conservative with their tone-of-voice.

‘Shut up and take my money!’ went the other way. A family brand saying “shut up”? Whilst depicting scenarios in their advertising that were mischievous and cheeky? Australians absolutely loved it.

From a media perspective, in Australia, TV remains the best channel to reach large amounts of people, quickly. Yet with 13 campaigns a year, we’d burn through our budget very quickly if we weren’t careful. So ALL our TVC’s are just 15 seconds, and supported by 6 second ‘bumpers’, extending our reach/frequency into digital and social; and again highlighting the need for a simple, yet engaging, platform.

Our strategy faced the hard truths of the category, and we demanded our creative idea did the same.

Eating KFC was about giving into your desires, so we focussed on that - not price - to communicate our Value deals.

Our creative idea was: “Give in to the chicken”.

Pop culture then inspired us with how to express the idea. “Shut up and take my money!” - a well-known meme that originated from a popular TV show - was the “language” people used in social media to communicate their overwhelming desire to purchase something.

We wanted to reassure people it was OK to give into desire, so the phrase was a perfect fit, while also being culturally on-point.

The platform quickly became shorthand for KFC launching another deal, neatly stitching together our Value campaigns – for which we’ve now created over 20, and counting.

Our seminal moment came after acknowledging two uncomfortable truths:

1.The decision to eat KFC isn’t rational. In fact, if you think about it too much, you’ll probably get a salad. You eat KFC when you give into temptation and impulse. Perversely, it’s actually an emotional decision, in a category governed by rational price-points.

2.We were letting competitors dictate the rules. Every month we went head-to-head with them on price, and lost. It was a long-term problem, and we were trapped in short-term tactics that weren’t working.

We didn’t need more individual, rational, Value campaigns. We needed a creative platform.

A creative platform would help ‘stitch together’ each Value campaign – ensuring we got credit for having good deals in-market every month – whilst also providing us a golden opportunity to break the category convention, and lean into the truth that for consumers, QSR was emotional, not rational.

So we turned to social listening to learn how consumers talked about ‘value’, unearthing another truth: ‘good value’ wasn’t about low cost/cheap; it was about how much you were prepared to pay to fulfil your desires.

We immediately knew our idea had to acknowledge that when it comes to value, desire trumps ‘cheap’.

Independent research by Kantar shows that KFC has increased its metric of “good value for money” by a whopping 7.4% since the launch of the ‘Shut up and take my money!’ campaign.

In 2017, McDonalds led the category at 24.1%, with KFC lagging way behind at 12.2%. Yet by the end of 2018, KFC had leapt up to 19.6% - the highest the metric has ever been for KFC.

Additionally, the creative platform provided KFC with the executional framework to be ruthlessly consistent. The creation of a platform and distinctive brand asset significantly aided branding, with ‘correct brand linkage’ hitting 80% by the end of the 2018.

Most importantly for the business, the campaign helped increase sales. Since the launch of ‘Shut and take my money!’, the platform has helped drive consistently strong results, with an average sales growth of 4.8%, every single quarter!