KFC's game-changing approach to mastering the delivery market
Services
Sales
Mobile
Overview
KFC wanted to launch its own delivery service in a crowded, competitive market — one that was occupied by third-party aggregator platforms and the brand’s heavy-spending main competitors, but that provided a tantalising opportunity as delivery and takeaway sales in 2022 for restaurants were double that of pre-Covid levels
Challenge
KFC brought GroupM Nexus’ cross-channel solution into its marketing kitchen to achieve its key business objectives and campaign goals:
● Ensure KFC’s owned delivery service achieved profitability by acquiring enough (4.3% or higher) of total KFC Delivery sales via KFC’s owned delivery service
● Boost app downloads, daily app users, and app transactions to acquire customers and drive sales
● Reduce wastage by executing balanced media delivery in store delivery zones, with the aim for each adult to be exposed to a weighted cross-media delivery.
However, to effectively launch the delivery service across 617 of KFC's +1000 stores, KFC would need to deliver a campaign spanning 657 postcode areas, each varying in size, population, and characteristics. Consequently, the availability of media inventory in each area differed significantly and a traditional campaign of this scale would be costly.
To effectively and efficiently reach consumers in all these locations, KFC turned to Mindshare and GroupM Nexus to leverage its cross-channel solution for the launch of the KFC delivery service with a first-of-its-kind national campaign.
Killer stats
Approach
GroupM Nexus knew that launching KFC’s delivery proposition at a national level, without getting drowned out by heavy-spending competitors, would require a highly targeted approach focused on SOV within viable audiences but at the same time would need to ensure reach at scale.
In addition, the campaign would require a significant amount of flexibility and agility to align with real time delivery capacity. GroupM Nexus's cross-channel solution allows for all of this through a single point of entry and optimisation, by combining the strengths of advanced TV, digital audio, digital out-of-home (DOOH), mobile, premium digital video, and premium display to deliver media with programmatic precision on a large scale.
KFC stores have a focussed delivery radius, so the campaign needed to precisely target audiences within these areas, while ensuring maximum awareness for the 617 stores with an equal weight of impressions across each target area. It also needed to be reactive to any delivery capacity changes or challenges experienced by individual stores. GroupM Nexus overcame this by constructing a campaign tailored to each postcode using a scaled cross-channel media mix, ensuring even delivery per location by assigning appropriate weighting to each channel. A single addressable TV exposure, for example, is considered equal to 14 digital display exposures. This weighting methodology ensures that the campaign attained equal and maximum exposure in all areas, despite the slight variations in the media channel combinations used in each.
However, this was only half the story, as real-time performance optimisation was made possible through a first-of-its-kind dashboard that integrated KFC’s live app sales data with media delivery. Using a measurement solution developed by Mindshare, Reactive Media Attribution (RMA), KFC’s app sessions were linked to media expenditure by channel and postcode, enabling the campaign to continuously shift the media mix to drive better performance. Using the dashboard allowed the campaign to be highly reactive, driving further efficiencies. In one example, when 25 stores were identified where the offer in the creative was no longer available due to external factors, budget was instantly shifted elsewhere resulting in further reduced wastage.
Results
GroupM Nexus cross channel activation exceeded business and campaign targets; the agile distribution of media budgets prioritised areas where delivery was available and deprioritised areas with low or declining delivery capacity, while the RMA dashboard drove further efficiencies, making the campaign work even harder. We successfully delivered a nationwide campaign in the most agile way possible, specifically achieving:
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Gross Revenue ROI of 8.8, 38% higher than the 2022 all media average.
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4.7% of all KFC Delivery sales were acquired via KFC’s owned delivery service vs 4.3% target.
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Owned Delivery Campaign was the most efficient driver of KFC App Sessions of all campaigns that ran during 2022, 226% higher than the 2022 all media average.
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App traffic increased by 31%.
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RMA attributed 8x more app events to media than KFC’s last-click solution, demonstrating the performance impact of GroupM Nexus's cross-channel activation.
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RMA channel mix optimisations delivered 20% more app sessions with the same level of budget.
Nexus’ innovation connected near-live sales data from KFC’s individual franchises to a national, multi-channel campaign, transforming the launch of our delivery service. It enabled real-time optimisations that continually drove sales and ensured profitability, creating a reactive campaign that could be adjusted to real-world conditions. Due to the phenomenal capability of this approach to maximise results, we have been working to apply it to upcoming campaigns.
