For decades, we have celebrated how cool eating with your hands is, but in 2020, in a Covid-19 world, ‘Finger licking good’ was not ‘good’ anymore. However, we knew KFC lovers wouldn't stop eating, so we decided to innovate a new way to deliver the chicken they crave, in the smartest and cleanest way possible, by turning our instore touchpoints into napkins: placemats, food bags, flyers, and receipts, proving that all you really need to fully enjoy our chicken is your fingers and a craving for chicken.

Winning back our cool with our young audience and giving a modern twist to our famous hospitality values was not going to be achieved through a beautiful manifesto film. The approach needed to be more direct and impactful.

We decided to take one of our most iconic brand assets, the one that expresses the very essence of our hospitality, our slogan ‘Finger lickin’ good’, and bring it to life in a way that has never been seen before.

We put our money where our mouths (and fingers )were, and turned our store into a ‘Finger Lickin’ good’ celebration by turning all our instore touchpoints into napkins, proving that all you really need to fully enjoy our chicken in our store is your fingers and a craving for our food. We ‘napkinized’ our store to let people enjoy our delicious chicken with their hands and without complex.

While our slogan ‘Finger Lickin’ good’ is famous across the world and a motto to our most fervent customers, we discovered through focus group research during our yearly brand audit that it was not resonating with people in the Middle East. Besides that, in a Covid-19 world, ‘Finger licking good’ was not ‘good’ anymore.

We needed to find a disruptive and unmistakable way to bring our KFC slogan to life, and explain that it is more than a line, but rather something by which we live, and truly believe in. At the same time, we needed to convey that this line inspires how our chicken is cooked (namely with a lot of love), and how we aim to make our customers feel at ease when they enjoy KFC’s delicious food in our restaurants.

After weeks of development in partnership with our suppliers, we developed a special ink-resistant tissue paper; strong enough to wipe with, but thin enough to be printed on with chemical free ink. We gave a second usage to all the paper inside our restaurants, our placemats, food bags, flyers, our posters and cashier receipts.

We debuted our Napkinized stunt in Dubai and Beirut in January 2019, surprising our customers across our restaurants, as well as starting the new year with clean fingers and a good laugh. We uploaded the video of our stunt and the gobsmacked reactions of our customers using our posters and paper bags as napkins on social media, inviting others to come and be playful and experience our Napkinized stores.

More than 7000 KFC customers interacted with our Napkinized stores on-ground and had the time of their lives, feeling free to dig in our chicken with their fingers without having to think of the greasy consequences. The video of our stunt received more than 1 million impressions on social media with people falling in love with the idea of being able to freely enjoy our delicious meal and praising our activation. The Napkinized stunt gave life and meaning to our ‘Finger Lickin’ good’ line and southern hospitality, and showed that even though KFC is an historical fast food brand, they can have fun and don’t take themselves too seriously!