KFC ‘Believe’ campaign refused to conform. And now we’re all in a chicken cult
KFC refused to play by the rules, ditched conformity, and turned us all into members of a chicken cult. And guess what? It worked.
Jon and Craig unpacked the genius behind KFC’s new "Believe" campaign with The Drum. When a brand leans boldly into creativity, and isn’t afraid to get a little weird, amazing things happen.
Great insight and execution Mother. We loved it.
(A 3-minute read with a cheeky KFC this weekend?)
KFC UK’s latest ad launch boasts fantastical world-building and absurdist storytelling. The Liberty Guild’s Jon Williams muses over how it masterfully breaks the category’s monotony.
‘All Hail Gravy,’ KFC UK’s ode to gravy-dipped chicken, is the second installment in the ‘Believe’ series. It is a magnificent ad and, more pertinently, the deep-fried canary in the coal mine warning us of the surreal work that we marketers may need to produce in these difficult times. In a world where engagement is everything and we all have to battle ambivalence in the attention economy, this campaign boasts real stopping power.
Because shit got real in the real world. The Trumpian dystopia owns the news agenda, so we in the sideshow that is adland have to try harder to push the surreal button, don’t we? When I’m living in Black Mirror, I need more than burger porn to turn to.
So, from KFC’s perspective, I am not surprised that its (and our) obsession with chicken has tipped over into a cult. I feel the fervor too.
Yes, ‘All Hail Gravy’ isn’t perfect.
Some people may bleat on about an actual chicken making an appearance, for example. And it’s true we don’t usually see the live food we’re going to eat in a kind of mass gaslighting.
But in this instance, I’d argue a reinforcement of the fact that the product actually is chicken is a differentiator and a welcome change to the nuggets next door on the high street that are a kind of mechanically reformed apology. There is a conformity about the rest of the sector that makes it hard for brands to cut through.
The original Cooper Clarke-penned ‘Chickentown,’ which influenced KFC gloriously back in 2019, talks about monotony and a sort of pervasive entrapment. More than just the homogenous high street, though, that feels like the marketing environment for this sector as well.
There are notable exceptions.
For those of you old enough, Subservient Chicken redefined fast food marketing as digital went mainstream 20 years ago.
And slightly more recently, Moldy Whopper drove sales by 14% while attracting a lot of negative sentiment as well, mainly from inside the business, because it broke category norms. It made a lot of PR as well. But sometimes that’s the point, isn’t it?
And KFC’s ‘FCK’ response to the chicken shortage positions it as the sort of mate you can relate to at 11 on a Friday night. The tone of voice was spot on… as it is now.
All the chip arranging and pickle fluffing that goes on in the unreal, surreal world of food beauty makes us all feel slightly deflated when we actually hold the real food in our hands. We’re sick of the beauty parade, the sameness, the blandness. We want something to feed our appetite for escapism as well.
So to differentiate in a noisy, crowded, bleary, late-night neon market like this is so damn good to see. I love the dripping gravy outdoors. I love Vedran Rupic’s dynamic camera moves and framing. You really get the scale. They clearly know their audience. And that isn’t easy. Time poor, fickle, soaked in pop culture (not gravy).
To a demographic that eats up the absurdist humor that rules TikTok and Snapchat, this seriously leverages meme culture as a driver of engagement.
And importantly, it doesn’t take itself seriously at all… I’m just waiting to see where it goes next. Literally. Perhaps it goes up a tributary gravy river to find Colonel Sanders as Colonel Kurtz in a homage to Brando in a dimly lit temple as he descends into madness. I’m salivating at the very idea…
A global strategist’s view
As I have access to literally hundreds of brilliant, globally distributed adland minds, I asked one of our superstars, Craig Wills, to share his thoughts as well. [Editor’s note: Two opinions in one opinion piece? That’s a radical idea. Let’s roll with it.]
To the agency, you lucky Mother [London] cluckers, we’ve all been scarred by the whimsical line ‘we’re gonna create a movement’ that sits like a soz face ambition on the brief manifesting a cheap ass desire to ‘drive earned’ and get your customers to do the heavy lifting for you.
But this, WOAH… I’ve been to Varanasi and witnessed true pilgrimage and sacrifice… true belief, utterly unwavering. You can’t half-arse belief. You can’t maybe believe. To re-incarnate is to believe, even if and maybe even more if that is as a chicken fillet.
In the pursuit of cultural resonance, this manifests a pure, steadfast, double-down, no a little bit more, deeper, YES...there is the expression of a brand committed to a truth, chewing on it and spitting it back into the world by way of a 60’ feast.
A strategic masterstroke in simplicity; in truism, in proper insight without dilution, in nailing it and allowing creativity to play with it, riff off it and then holding a mirror up to the world we exist in today.
If KFC doesn’t believe, then why should we? But it does, it really does, so take me to the gravy ganges. I’m all in.
Photo: KFC Believe campaign still - watch the full video here
