KFC Reinforces its 'So Good' Tagline Through The KFC Friend-Meter Campaign

KFC, the beloved nemesis to McDonalds, Burger King and the world of other fast food giants played up the fact that everyone who enjoys a KFC meal does it with a friend or two (or more). They resorted to Social Media and in a way that not a lot of its peers may have done in the past. The idea was simple and crisp. Not too flashy and pretty self-explanatory. And in-line with what the campaign message stands for. The app was called The “KFC Friend-meter”. An app that would tell you what item on the menu best resembles your friend through a set of questions.

Like, past campaigns, KFC came up with a fun campaign this time too.

Objective

The objective of the app was to simply depict that KFC meals are enjoyed best with friends and through the app reflect different kinds of friends you have depending on what they would do for you.

The hidden motive is the psychological connect that the app tries to build with the audience thereby taking the KFC experience to the customer’s computer screens and from there into the store.

Execution

The execution lay on the basis of a “Flash based” app. The app along with its landing page permitted you to enter the “So Good” friend app after you ‘liked’ the page. Once you entered the meter you will be asked to select a friend who KFC called ‘the so good friend’.

Accessing your friend list you were then asked to select a friend and go on.
Once you selected the ‘so good friend’ you were asked a couple of questions that would relate to you and your friend and your habits together.

The questions looked something like this. 

On attempting the questions the answer looked something like this. 

Now though you got yourself an answer, you could still manage to add in another friend and see what the KFC Friend Meter thinks about you two.

The concept was relatively simple and was based on answer selection and permutations & combinations completely.

Positives

The app manages to elevate the ‘friend factor’ through the app effectively which is what the entire friend centred campaign is all about.

Each kind of friend was related to a burger on the menu and characteristics that it would possess.

For example when a friend is compared to KFC boneless strips, it implies that your friend is flexible and understanding in nature. The result coming from the questions you answered not only relates your friend to an item on the menu but subtly tells you that you could grab yourself a meal with that ‘so good ‘ friend and hey maybe order that item on the menu that they stand for.

The idea is simple and participants have an instant connect with their ‘so good’ friends through the KFC Friend-O-Meter.

Another implicit positive is the potential brand recall value. You would remember your friend when you see the same item on KFC’s menu, or alternatively remember KFC when you look at that ‘so good’ friend. Take then along to fetch a meal and KFC’s mission is accomplished.

It isn’t measurable, but it definitely can’t be avoided.

Scope for Improvement

KFC is a big brand and the above could be taken as a simple branding exercise. There’s isn’t much a relevance to how this could generate direct sales in anyway, an element of marketing most senior level marketers are interested in.

May be an invitation to ‘x’ number of friends to the app could bring in a discount coupon as a reward,

OR

Loyalty points which could be redeemed on online orders,

OR

Even a ‘tag a friend and bring him along’ for a period of the first 24 hours would work well.

Conclusion

With 6300+ monthly users on the app that was bought in by ads and the existing fan base, this was a modest attempt at effectively playing up KFC’s campaign extending the ‘KFC So Good’ Ideology to ‘KFC So Good friend’.