In Spain, fried chicken is not part of the culture. But KFC is.

When Spanish agency, PS21, was given the task of embedding KFC in the culture of younger audiences it began to notice that young people were using the expression, I invite you to KFC, organically on Twitter.

It’s just that they weren’t asking others to share fried chicken with them. They were inviting them to this:

Many agencies, and so few brands, would have dared to use this phenomenon – it’s being all about sex – in a campaign, let alone invite their audience to “Know each other, Fuck each other and Cum together”. However, young people are very interested in sex and not very interested in traditional forms of advertising. In fact, they are very good at eluding it. So PS21 and KFC did dare.

The partners realised that they had an opportunity to make KFC cool. Young people tend to KFC in some not so nice places.

So they created the KFC Palace Suite, a room at one of Spain’s most famous luxury hotels in Madrid. The suite was fitted out with KFC everything. “We decorated the suite in red and white tones and hung pictures of the Colonel. In addition, we designed all kinds of KFC amenities exclusively for the occasion – bathrobes, cushions, sheets, soap, candles, slippers and, of course, KFC condoms. And to make the experience complete, we also designed a menu with a selection of exclusive offers for two that could be ordered, free of charge, through our own room service,” PS21 explained.

This all sounds easy, But a brand is not always welcome if it marches into youth territory. “We were aware that we were going to enter into a conversation that was organically created by people,” PS21 continued. “So we decided to do so little by little. We started responding to those tweets that had the most impact by appreciating their ideas and telling them that we’d heard them and that they should be watching out for something. For the launch day, we created a video and several ads in social media showing the room and explaining how to get a night in the suite.

People began to participate and the idea began to expand in social media, reaching some of young Spaniards’ top influencers. @TheGrefg (3.1 MM followers), @PostureEspanol (233 K followers) @Cabronazi (6.5 MM followers) began to invite those they wanted to KFC.

“So we weren’t just a brand responding to a conversation, but we gave our audience the opportunity to co-create a cultural moment that they could join and, hopefully, enjoy to the fullest by spending two nights in the KFC Palace suite. Something they would never have thought they could do.”  

Bravery won. KFC Palace achieved the best ever reach for KFC on social media (5.3 million), the average Twitter interaction rate increased +326%, the average volume of mentions of the brand on Twitter alone was +211% and the hashtag #teinvitoakfc became the top trending topic. All this achieved a PR value of 480,000 euros.

https://youtu.be/51KrKbqsEcw