The Campaign

We had several researches; more than 40% of people work on Christmas holidays. When people wear out from work, taking a bath accounts for more than 50% of a thing they want to do to relax recovering from the fatigue. KFC has become synonymous with Christmas in Japan. While being such a big part of the Japanese Christmas tradition, there are many who have to work during the holiday and cannot spend time with their families and significant others as Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan. For them to feel the Christmas spirits and relax after working on Christmas, we created a very special gift, a chicken leg shaped bath bomb, when thrown in water, looks like frying chicken and smells like the 11 secret ingredients of KFC Original Recipe, and gave the gifts to every Santa on the street including our own KFC employees.

Creative Execution

We created a very special promotional gift collaborating with a toy company called Village Vanguard that stood apart conventional Christmas presents, a chicken leg shaped bath bomb that, when thrown in water, looks like frying chicken and smells like the 11 secret ingredients of KFC Original Recipe, to be given out as a surprise gift to those Santas working on the street and busy KFC employees to relax. On 12/24 and 12/25, we gave the surprise gifts to the Santas working on the street in Tokyo area as well as the KFC employees working in the shops. During the 3 days, 12/25 – 12/27, we solicited stories of “how terribly busy you were working on Christmas” from the users on Twitter and picked 100 people who tweeted their stories and sent them the Fried Chicken Bath Bombs.

*Increased the buzz during the Christmas holidays - PR exposure: Domestic 300 media, overseas 509 media - PR Advertising Value Equivalency: approximately $2M USD - 436,921 of retweets on Twitter *The sales during the Christmas period, the 3 days (December 23rd till 25th in 2017), reached 6 billion yen ($55 million USD), the record-high sale. *We made many Santas who worked on Christmas holidays refreshed. - Total number of the entries for the bath bombs: 256,326 entries

We promote the campaign using the Japanese Christmas tradition for those who have to work during the holiday and can't spend time with families and significant others as Christmas is not a national holiday. For them to feel the Christmas spirits and relax after working on Christmas, we created a very special gift (the bath bombs) and gave them to every Santa on the street. The campaign made a lot of buzz and lead to the entry to win the bath bombs on socials that were our target media being picked up by not only domestic but also international media.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

We targeted those who work on Christmas combining with the item that can provide the relaxation to create the promotion, guerilla and social campaigns to directly deliver the bath bombs receiving a lot of great response to it and being picked up by not only domestic but also international media.