Sales Over Night, Brand Over Time
Supporting the KFC US Marketing team taught me a few things about the restaurant industry—and life. Colonel Harland Sanders believed “as the clock ticks, the easy way becomes harder and the hard way becomes easier.” Fast food and fast casual aren’t easy—margins are tight. As one of the world’s largest fast food restaurant companies, KFC’s parent Yum! Brands has learned a thing or two about efficient operations, working within a franchise system and delivering a branded experience. Sales over night, brand over time—not the easy way, but the only way to balance promotion with brand equity.
New Store Concept Creates Excitement and Drives Transactions
Situation
KFC® was exploring a new fast-casual restaurant brand and to challenge assumptions within the category. The concept was intended to move past fast food to better food, fast enough—creating excitement and driving transactions through familiar discovery.
The objective was to take the equity of the KFC brand and layer in the consumer needs of today to create a restaurant vision of modern legacy.
Design was to move beyond “isolated logo development” into multi-layered and thoughtful consumer-facing brand personality and messaging development. The aesthetic positioning was to be fast-casual caliber, not QSR graphic expression.
Solution
Leveraging consumer research, collaborative strategy sessions and insight-driven design, a brand identity was crafted for a new innovative concept store, KFC Eleven. The project approach was holistic, partnering with the client to support every aspect of creating a new restaurant.
From initial brand development through the grand opening of the first location, KFC was provided a comprehensive marketing plan. The scope of work included logo development, photography, packaging, in-store merchandising, website creation and even software templates used to train store employees. An eclectic, contemporary aesthetic that was leveraged in-store and across social media to convey the new brand, as well as a fully-developed marketing campaign for the launch and further sustained growth.
Results
Press coverage was enormous including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Nation’s Restaurant News. It generated 115,148,265 PR impressions, driving consumers to reappraise the KFC brand.
The family of packaging developed for this concept won a 2013 QSR/FPI Packaging Award in the Brand Delivery category. KFC eleven generated a sales increase of 50% from the previous KFC store. The concept is being utilized as the brand’s innovation lab and continued to drive relevant solutions that will ultimately shape the future of the brand.
