KFC-DRUMBEATS OF RED ENCOURAGEMENT

TitleKFC-DRUMBEATS OF RED ENCOURAGEMENT
BrandYUM CHINA
Product / ServiceKFC
CategoryA02. Use of Social / Digital Platform
EntrantTRIO ISOBAR Shanghai, CHINA
Idea Creation TRIO ISOBAR Shanghai, CHINA
Production TRIO ISOBAR Shanghai, CHINA

Credits

Name Company Position
Tim Peng Trio Isobar Creative Director
Chris Chen Trio Isobar CEO&ECD

The Campaign

The idea came from two things: The first is the drum beat. In ancient China, drum beats had always been a symbol that motivated the armies. Then the drum beats became a way of cheering in festivals and competitions in Chinese culture. The second is the color red, a symbol of China which happened to be KFC’s brand color. Hence, we came up with the idea of rallying young consumers to use the red KFC buckets as drums to cheer for Team China. We first did an experiment to make sure that the KFC buckets can be used as drums and they worked very well. We then redesigned the bucket with traditional Chinese cultural elements to create KFC Drum Bucket as the center of this campaign. Then we invited Ms Tan Wei-wei to perform a theme song to demonstrate the qualities of China and inspire consumers to participate.

Creative Execution

We invited Ms. Tan Wei-wei performed the song “Red Encouragement”, a rock music reinterpretation of a song from a 300 year old Hua-yin opera. The collision of Western Rock and Chinese Opera made the song truly powerful. The music video, which also served as the TV commercial, was released on all the major online music and video platforms as well as during an offline concert. In addition to the MV, Ms. Tan released a short video on the most popular UGC video platform “Miao-pai” to rally consumers to participate in the “Red Encouragement Drum Beat Relay”. We then released a HTML5 game on social media platforms for consumers to hit the drum in time to the music and accumulate beats.

As many celebrities voluntarily joined the relay, KFC “Red Encouragement” created a tremendous social media buzz during the Olympics Games, which led to an excellent sales performance. • 16 million plays of the MV by Tan Wei-wei and 1.55 million views of her call-for-action video in 8 days • 10.4 million participations of HTML 5 game and 55 million drum beats were made in 20 days. • 500 million social media exposure of the social posting # RedEncouragement

The core of the KFC “Red Encouragement” campaign was the song performed by a young famous Chinese rock star, Ms. Tan Wei-wei. We invited a reputable song writer Liu Zhou to compose the music reinterpreting a song from a 300 year old Hua-yin opera with Rock rhythm. The collision of Western Rock and Chinese Opera and Ms. Tan’s resounding voice made the song powerful and motivating. The music video served as the TV commercial for KFC’s summer campaign. Ms Tan and her song perfectly delivered KFC’s desired image of standing alongside the young Chinese people during this national proud moment.

The key audience of KFC is young adults, aged 16- 35. They grew up when China was rapidly developing economically and gradually playing a more important role on the world stage. They are proud of what the country has accomplished over the past few decades. Especially the wonderful performance in the 2008 Beijing Olympics which made this event one of the proudest national moments in their minds. Our strategy was to make KFC a part of the cheering during the Olympic Games, so the core idea of this campaign was to use the iconic KFC bucket as a drum to accompany the song “Red Encouragement” by Ms. Tan Wei-wei to cheer for Team China on social media. We hoped to leverage Ms. Tan’s talent and image to rally young consumers to join the drum beat relay to express their love for the country.