Mother London’s ‘FCK-ing’ Clever campaign that saved KFC from Crisis

To all the non-vegetarians out there, picture this: you are famished and craving some hot fried, juicy chicken. You head to the nearest KFC outlet, walk in, and the management approaches you, saying “Sir/Ma’am, we are closing down as we do not have chicken, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”

Your instant thought – Whaaaaaat?! A Chicken restaurant with no chicken?! F**K!

Yep, you read that right! That is precisely what happened in 2018 in the UK and Ireland. As many as 900 outlets were forced to shut down due to running out of key ingredients, including chicken. However, what followed was arguably one of the greatest examples of how a crisis was dealt with.

The Background

Let’s turn back the clock to October 2017, shall we? So, KFC decided to terminate its contract with food-delivery specialist ‘Bidvest Logistics’. This move was made as they inked a deal with Quick Service Logistics (QSL) and Deutsche Post-owned – ‘DHL’. The duo promised to “revolutionize” the UK food service distribution market. Mind you, this was the first time DHL partnered with QSL to deliver a bespoke service tailored to KFC's unique needs.

Keeping the smiles amid chaos

Despite the bold promises from KFC and DHL, many restaurants found themselves offering only a “limited menu” and operating on reduced hours. Within a few months, the cracks in the supply chain started to show, and many KFC locations began running low on chicken products.

The irony? There were around 500 chicken farmers ready to supply fresh chicken every day, but due to delivery issues, it went to waste. This led to frustrated customers, with some resorting to calling the police when their local KFC shut down. In an effort to lighten the mood, KFC turned to humor, quipping, “The chicken crossed the road – just not to our restaurants.” It was a tough time, but they tried to keep a smile on everyone’s face amid the chaos.

A Brand on its knees amidst customer outrage

One of the most powerful tools at our fingertips today is social media. When an issue arises, our instinct is often to tweet about it, hoping to make it go viral. It’s fascinating how quickly a single post can capture attention and spark a larger conversation, isn’t it?

Coming back to the crisis, as KFC began closing its outlets, a wave of fury erupted on social media. Frustrated customers swiftly took to social media platforms to voice their anger. With each passing hour, the brand’s reputation took another hit, seemingly without a solution in sight. On February 21, 2018, there were a staggering 53,000 mentions of KFC’s chicken shortage, flooded with hashtags like #ChickenCrisis and #KFCCrisis, according to the social media monitoring service - ‘Brandwatch’. The situation spiraled, and the online chatter only intensified, turning a brand crisis into a viral sensation.

KFC’s ‘FCK-ing’ Clever Idea

You know what’s an ‘anagram’, don’t you? Well, we shall get to that in a bit. As soon as KFC realized the gravitas, they turned to ‘Mother London’, a creative agency, in search of salvation. The agency decided to utilize print media to address the crisis, recognizing its potential to reach a significant portion of UK consumers. They believed that print offers higher trust metrics compared to social media. ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Metro’, both of which had a combined readership of over 6 million, were selected to be used to issue an apology to KFC’s customers.

Now, Mother London came up with a rather unique way to apologize, which is just to rearrange the letters of the brand “KFC” to “FCK”, in other words – an anagram! KFC published a full-page ad in the aforementioned newspapers with the letters “FCK” followed by an empty bucket with no chicken and a straightforward apology.

"A chicken restaurant without any chicken. It’s not ideal. It’s been a hell of a week, but we’re making progress, and every day more and more fresh chicken is being delivered to our restaurants,” joked the ad.

An Impressive Comeback!

The ad which only made it to two important newspapers in the location garnered a combined audience of 797 million around the world with the help of more than 700 press articles and TV discussions. Additionally, 219 million users interacted with the “FCK” campaign on social media which eventually led to the campaign generating over 1 billion in terms of reach just by a single ad in the newspaper.

This is one classic example of ‘content seeding’. It is basically a strategic approach to scatter content across various platforms. Following the success of the campaign, KFC restored its operations to normal just like it had promised. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, DHL was stripped of some of the operations, and the contract was handed back to Bidvest Logistics.

The campaign reaped the rewards as it earned one silver and three gold Lions in Cannes, including in the Print & Publishing category. Furthermore, the campaign was awarded the Grand Prix for ‘Campaign of the Year’ at the Marketing New Thinking Awards 2018. Surely, this was one of the greatest examples of how a crisis was tackled.