KFC McHack
KFC
Issue 51 | June 2019
Agency
Ogilvy Amsterdam
Creative Team
Gijs Sluijters, Joris Tol
Production Team
Robot Kittens
Other Credits
Esther de Kok, Account Director Rogier van der Werf, Strategy Director Tim van Aershot, PR Planner Paul Duijser, Designer
Date
May 2018
Background
KFC is famous for its Original Recipe Chicken®. This means they use fresh chicken and bread it by hand in a blend of 11 herbs and spices. And in the Netherlands, they're the only food chain specialized in chicken. But in May 2018, McDonald’s launched a new chicken burger. They suddenly claimed to have better tasting chicken and even used their big media spend to diss KFC! KFC Netherlands had to fight back. But their budget was small and McDonald’s massive campaign was already up and running.
Idea
A week after McDonald’s launched their campaign, the idea was to steal their ads and use them in their advantage. KFC released: McHack – a web-app that uses image recognition to turn McDonald’s chicken advertising into genuine, original Kentucky Fried Chicken. Just snap any McDonald’s ‘crispy chicken’ poster, billboard, tv ad, banner, website, facebook post, menu board, or whatever you could find… and their web-app turned it into Finger Lickin’ Good chicken at KFC.
Results
With McHack - #gettheoriginal, they reacted within a week and managed to hijack McDonald’s big media spend through every channel. Many discussions were started on whose chicken tastes best (And won most of them). Influencers and chicken enthusiasts roamed the streets and snapped over 30.000 McDonald’s freezer chicken ads in order to get Original Recipe® chicken at KFC. 3.3 million people in total were reached. They got 97% positive response in social. Boosted May and June sales. And got the record straight on who is the one and only fried chicken authority!