Sound Bite Interactive Record Table
KFC South Africa
Issue 36 | September 2015
Agency
Gloo@Ogilvy
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Pete Case Executive Creative Director Adam Brandt Creative Director Gregory King Senior Art Director Anneke Jacobs Digital Creatives Jared Gower Marina Le Roux Copywriters Tiffany Morris Anneke Jacobs Illustrator Jared Gower Marina Le Roux Anneke Jacobs
Production Team
Technical Director Graham Fry Development Marc Canham Charles Ash
Date
May 2015
Background
The task was to help KFC increase the relevance of its offering and drive an exciting in-store experience creating brand love, word of mouth and return visits in the urban youth market.
Idea
Research said that this core target audience was heavily interested in music – so the idea was to create a new one-of- a-kind music platform.
It was hard for young musicians to get signed by music labels so KFC set out to help by creating interactive audio tables in one of its flagship restaurants in Bloemfontein.
The tables were illustrated by local artists to encourage diners to touch the graphics in order to play tracks. If they liked what they heard, they could distribute the music through social sharing and thus give young musicians a wider audience.
Visitors to KFC could listen by placing their elbows on the tables surface, giving them an immersive musical experience without disturbing anyone else in store. The technology transmitted sound waves through their arms to their ears using innovative 'bone technology'. Thus an ordinary eating experience was transformed into an immersive digital sound experience to support and amplify local up and coming artists.
Results
Customers gave overwhelmingly positive feedback about the experience. The installation increased the average dwell time in-store and led to widespread social media hype about the innovation.
Our Thoughts
Innovation in communications is what Directory stands for. Often, that means paying tribute to creative people who have found a new way of doing the same-old. But increasingly I think innovation means how brands can become a part of culture rather than imitate it or follow one step behind. Faris Yakob, formerly Chief Innovation Officer at MDC, has said innovation is “exploration and application of different outputs from similar inputs.”
So, for me this idea has innovation written all over it, not because of the ‘bone technology’ but because it is a completely new way of getting people to listen to music. And it has changed lunch into a concert.