Chicken Licken® is one of the South Africa’s best loved food brands, and Hotwings® is its hottest seller. Over years the business has developed a taste for creativity, a craving one might say. The brand (business) believes without a shadow of a doubt in two things; the power of product and the power of creativity, the power of the combination to drive sales.

Every 2nd year or so, Chicken Licken® invests in a big breakthrough campaign to drive sales of Hotwings®. And every time, the brief to the agency is the same; using a fresh and innovative big idea, create fame and talkability for the product, in order to sell more Hotwings®, specifically the Feed My Craving® 10 meal, than last year.

Chicken Licken® as a business, only recognizes one metric as a sign of success: Did we sell more chicken?

The communication approach for Hotwings® has remained consistent for the better part of a decade and relies on a core insight – “food cravings can be extreme”. This insight lives as the core creative idea – ‘when the craving’s got you, it’s got you’.

The only way to remain relevant and fresh is to tap into the zeitgeist of the country or world and deliver a big idea that is topical and relevant for the majority of South Africans. One such hot topic of public conversation was Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on humanity.

Sbu 2.0, the quirky yet witty story of a science teacher so fixated on his craving for Hotwing® that he used his skill and love of science and technology to develop a robotic version of himself to fulfil his human roles, so he is free to feed his craving whenever it strikes.

The campaign was delivered through three channels; television formed the dominant medium, augmented by a digital layer that leveraged the film content to drive engagement and all of this supported by a layer of outdoor that was purely retail.

The campaign performed incredibly well against the objective of fame and talkability as it delivered a healthy engagement rate of 18,3% (the industry benchmark is 3 – 6%), with a total of 1.8 million video views. In fact, in the launch month, the hashtag #IAmBu started trending.

In terms of the business’ metric of success, “did it sell more chicken?”, the campaign was a success. Feed My Craving® 10 meal sales grew by 27% in the first month of launch. When measured against average monthly sales of the previous Hotwings® campaign (December 2016 – February 2017), the Sbu 2.0 campaign outperformed the previous year’s campaign by 62%.

The campaign delivered a 195% ROI and a 22% ROMI.

So, the campaign sold a whole lot more chicken for less money. Proof that when the craving for creativity’s got you, it gets you business results.