Tag: Fast food

Jollibee, the top local fast-food chain in the Philippines, which is continually making a name worldwide with its growing global presence, unveils in May of 2021 its first-ever global campaign. Amid numerous advertising campaigns launched this year, it’s ‘A Message From The Future’ that comes out as our Marketing Campaign of The Year. 

In a moving and tear-jerker three-minute film, Jollibee views the pandemic from the future – as a ‘survival story’ told to the new generation, one that is overcome through the power of family and sticking together. 

Through Jollibee’s strong delivery of content in the past years, it has moved from merely being a fast-food brand to now a platform that brings human stories to audiences, packaged in the most inspiring and touching narratives.

Here’s Francis Flores, JFC Philippines’ regional marketing head and Jollibee Philippines’ marketing head, who lets us in on the conceptualization process of the campaign – sharing on the inspiration and the goal of the film; and once and for all, revealing what the brand considers the crucial elements in serving a successful reel that resonates.

Creative Direction 

What inspired the storyline of the campaign?

Jollibee as a brand has always been about the joy of family. This has always been our main inspiration and guiding principle for all our Brand Love Campaigns whether for short films or brand thematic ads.

When the pandemic broke out, everyone was unprepared and had to face an uncomfortable reality. During this time, it was very difficult to convey messages of joy because fear and anxiety were the general sentiments of everyone, but we believed that there was a silver lining amid all this.

We were determined to encourage and uplift everyone by conveying an undisputed truth that even the worst situations cannot put down – the priceless joy that we get from being with our families. Despite the challenges and unfortunate effects that COVID-19 has brought, there is one positive thing that came with it, which is being able to spend more time with our families. From physically spending every waking hour together in lockdown to long video calls across continents, our family was what got us through.

We wanted this campaign to acknowledge the grim reality of the pandemic but still give a positive message of hope. It’s all about appreciating these moments and finding the ultimate joy with family. Our families have been a comforting factor for most of us in these tough times and we wanted everyone to be grateful for that. It was the year of the pandemic, but it was also the year of the family.

What elements does Jollibee’s creative team consider to make an ideal Jollibee campaign?

It all starts with a powerful and universal truth, and for this campaign – we are spending more time with our families now, it has never happened before and may never happen again. And coming from this powerful truth, we wanted to surface the positive things that we can be grateful for even at the height of the pandemic.

a. The rare opportunity to spend more time and grow closer with our family because of the lockdown/quarantine.

b. The realization that anything can happen anytime, so we must never take anything for granted.

c. Our greatest source of joy lies in the ones that matter the most – our families.

Another important aspect is our collaboration with our partner agencies. We’re blessed to be working with several world-class creative agencies and teams that work with us in bringing our brief and vision to life. And during the whole campaign process, we made sure that we worked in close collaboration with our partner agency – from crafting the brief, ideation, storylines until actual production.

It is also critical to clearly define the message we want to convey and who our audience is. Given the widespread effect of the pandemic, we aimed to reach every Filipino family across the globe and not just in the Philippines. To make this possible, we chose to work with a global team to package the creative message in the most universal way possible, but consciously kept it rooted in genuine Filipino values. The campaign was brought to life with the help of BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty), a Singapore-based creative agency, and director Law Chen, an American Born Chinese who is a multi-awarded film and advertising director. Armed with a global perspective, a powerful truth, and an inspiring universal message, we were determined to create a film that not only reflects the heart of the Jollibee brand, but also uplifts the human spirit.

Lastly, we made sure that we provided sufficient media, digital and PR support for our campaigns. We didn’t just focus on launching digital videos and ads, we applied a holistic approach for every campaign. We collaborated with our media, digital, and PR agencies to cover all relevant touchpoints and to maximize the reach and effectiveness of our campaigns. Specific to this campaign, we rolled out various initiatives in social media platforms, tapped media partners, and utilized influencers.

We also made it part of a bigger campaign for the month of May where we celebrated the joy of family, notwithstanding the challenges we were all faced during the pandemic. We launched the Family Thanksgiving month last May 1, and we came out with our Kwentong Jollibee Mother’s Day special a week after which espouses gratitude for your loved ones and the joy of family messaging.

Jollibee has been known to roll out emotional-driven films; why do you think it is important for a brand like Jollibee to communicate its brand message through film?

For over 40 years, Jollibee is a brand that is deeply rooted in Filipino culture and is known for bringing joy to families. It has been part of the lives of Filipino families – from simple bonding moments to celebrating major milestones. And it’s not just in the food that we provide, but in the actual experience and joy that people have with our brand. 

It has always been our mission to bring joy to everyone and producing video content has allowed us to continue effectively conveying our message to our target audience. As the world becomes more digital, with information and content made readily available on various platforms, we’re maximizing the use of videos and short films to continue spreading joy through meaningful but free content that resonates with our target audience.

Viewer perception

What has been the feedback of the audience since releasing this first-ever global campaign? 

As of this writing, the film has garnered over 24 million views on YouTube and Facebook combined since we launched it this year in May 2021. It is always great to see several comments and mentions on social media on how they were able to relate to the film and how it has prompted them to actually show and express their appreciation and love for their family members. 

Since this is Jollibee’s first global brand love campaign, it is also overwhelming to see a lot of positive feedback from the international media and advertising industry. We are also humbled and honored to be featured and picked up by global publications such as Ad Age, Ads of the World, and being among the Top 5 in Ad Forum’s best ads of the week worldwide.

What do you think the brand values ‘A Message from the Future’ convey to its viewers?

It’s about giving people a different perspective on the pandemic; to look at it from a more positive and hopeful light. While it’s undeniable that we are faced with a lot of challenges and hardships because of the pandemic, we want to highlight the importance of having our family by our side. So that when we look back, we won’t only relive the difficulties we have experienced, but rather we’ll remember more how our family was our source of strength, hope, and joy.

We know it’s easy to take things for granted, so we want to remind people to appreciate the time we have with our family and be thankful for even the little things that our family does for us. And like what was said in the video, we’ve all gone through a rough time during the pandemic, but it is our family’s love which saved us. So, no matter how sad this period of our life was, because of our family, we still found joy.

Credits:
Agency: BBH Singapore
Chief Creative Officer: Sascha Kuntze
Creative Directors: Mae Ong & Gaston Soto
Creative Team: Sandra Eichner, Charlene Chua, Dawn Abegail, Shervin Low
Business Director: Ross Henderson
Account Director: Victoria Fernandez
Account Managers: Isabel Ong, Daphne Tan
Chief Strategic Officer: Jacob Wright
Senior Strategist: Zoe Chen
Agency Producer: Wendi Chong
Production Company: Stink Films Shanghai
Director: Lawrence Chen
Film Out: Metropolis Post
Audio House: Twenty Below Music, 750mph, Fuse
Client: Jollibee
JFC Philippines Country/Regional Marketing Head and Jollibee Philippines Marketing Head: Francis Flores
Assistant Vice President and Head of Brand PR, Engagement and Digital Marketing: Arline Adeva

Senior Brand PR and Communications Manager: Dennis Reyes
Brand Engagement Manager: Beatriz Cruz
Social Media & Digital Content Officer: Jean Vittorio Sabado

This recognition is based on the results of Google Analytics on the most-read stories of 2021 with editorial validation on the significance of a leader’s contribution, campaigns results, and overall impact.

The start of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns brought Malaysians lives to a hold. Contained at home, Malaysians were cooking more at home and ordering less delivery. This posed a challenge to quick-service restaurants like KFC who had difficulty sustaining growth as a delivery brand. However, a new pandemic trend was fast on the rise, and that people were looking at their kitchens to provide them with a sense of fulfillment.

This is what Reprise, Mediabrands’ digital creative agency in Malaysia, realized. The pandemic was a chance to showcase culinary skills to friends and family and connect with the world outside. Reprise took the idea to fuel this creativity by offering KFC as an ingredient!

With KEPCI KITCHEN, Reprise turned Malaysian Kitchens into KFC Kitchens, built digital cookbooks, helped Instagram chefs display creativity, and in the process became much more popular as a delivery brand.

Malaysians asked, “How long can we keep ordering food on delivery?”

The initial Movement Control Order (MCO) saw all brands growing delivery sales, with KFC seeing an uplift of +49% in just one month. This peak soon plateaued as Malaysians asked themselves amid fears of job loss and uncertainty – how long can we keep ordering food on delivery?

The new enemy of QSR came in the form of home cooking! Malaysian households found themselves tightening their wallets and prioritizing essentials over delivery services. The country started seeing a gradual shift towards cheaper and healthier options with cooking at home. A study conducted at the end of March 2020 indicated that 62% of Malaysians said they were more inclined to cook at home.

The Challenge: How could KFC sustain business & delivery growth? KFC has a long-standing reputation as being a family brand. To sustain KFC’s growth via delivery, the fast-food chain had to make sure that its biggest fans – families – kept on ordering from them.

Our low-hanging fruit: Families. As a family brand, these were KFC’s natural audiences. Instead of cooking a meal for the entire family, KFC wanted to offer them a convenient and affordable option in KFC’s shareable buckets. However, along with sustaining momentum, the restaurant had to grow. For this, it needed to connect with the largest group of fast-food consumers in Malaysia.

Teens & Young Adults – the new territory for growth. This was the high-value market. They ordered more frequently, with a higher-order value per person. Reprise looked to see how KFC could drive offers on individual meals and cater to this audience, amid dominance from other QSR players.

The Objective: Getting a foot in the door to achieve 3 things

With the Campaign, KFC aims to achieve three things. Even amid the rising trend in home cooking, the brand’s objective is to make more people order KFC Delivery: to double the incidence and volume share of the delivery channel within its touchpoints within 3 months.

Second, it eyes to make KFC more popular in the delivery market by achieving two things: a.) growing the “Most Often Used Brand” by 50%, and b.) growing the “Brand Ever Used” by 50%.

Lastly, KFC wants teens & young adults to switch to KFC by increasing teens & young adults’ visitations for delivery by +10%.

One of the biggest challenges for KFC and Reprise is how could the KFC brand simultaneously connect with two separate audiences – its stronghold of families and the avenue for growth with teens/ young adults. Reprise realized that it could not convince such a large segment to change their minds, nor take on a mammoth enemy like home cooking.

Campaign Strategy & Insights

An interesting trend Reprise observed was that social media shares were increasingly devoted to “Lockdown Cooking”. Globally, everyone was keen on showing their innovative results in kitchens – be it Dalgona coffee or sourdough bread. As millions of people were deprived of regular jobs, curbed with available activities, and a limited social life, they felt useless and non-productive. That is where the kitchen came in!

The Cultural Insight

A period of non-productivity had become a time for creativity. Kitchen Creativity was fueling a way for millions of people globally to feel productive, purposeful, and fulfilled. Amid this excitement to create, Reprise asked themelves: how could KFC contribute to this game of Kitchen Creativity?

Our strategy: Repurpose KFC’s product from a fully prepared meal to an INGREDIENT

KEPCI KITCHEN: Turning every Malaysian kitchen into a KFC kitchen

Campaign Execution

Reprise’s premise was simple: Encourage Malaysians to order KFC Delivery by showing them how to use their KFC favorites more creatively through simple and convenient recipes for the family, and menu hacks for teens & young adults.

Launch: Introducing the Kepci Kitchen Instagram stories cookbook

We kicked off the campaign with the launch of our first six recipes that catered directly to the different MCO personalities – For the lazy one-pot cooks all chef; For the enlightened health & fitness junkie; For the gamer, the Netflix binger; For the one that misses the mamak; For the one that misses the warung (simple suburban café); For the one that misses ‘atas’ (upmarket) western joints.

During the early stages of lockdown, local and international campaigns showed many similarities. We saw a growing trend of cooking at home and were inspired by menus that were crafted to fit into Instagram stories. Tapping into this trend, we kept the approach both natural and grounded. Malaysians are known to be great foodies and this campaign allowed them to unleash their creativity and connect with one another through these unprecedented times.

Amir Faiz, Group Creative Director, Reprise Digital

All recipes were uploaded onto the KFC Instagram account, and stored in our highlights bar to create a digital cookbook shelf where Malaysians could browse and screencap our recipes, just like a real cookbook. From the get-go, we ensured that all recipes were easy to make with accessible and simple ingredients (due to MCO restrictions) while also championing our core favorites.

A PDF of the compiled recipes, presented as a cookbook, was also hosted on the KFC website

Amplification: Self-made, self-taught Instagram chefs

Reprise and KFC worked with Instagram chefs & foodies to create a new set of recipes that were broken down into three categories: big eats (5-6 pax, family sharing), mid eats (2-3 pax), and individual eats. This was to ensure that our two key audience groups could relate to KFC’s diverse body of recipes, providing an endless stream of ideas to remix their KFC orders.

A selection of influencers was carefully selected to appeal to the audience. Each of their postings had a clear CTA to purchase products featured and promoted KFC’s free delivery code.

Reaching a wider audience on TV

To extend KFC’s reach to its core audience and align with the increase in TV viewership in April, KFC embarked on a four-episode sponsorship with the TV3 program “Dari Dapur Saya Ke Dapur Anda” (From my kitchen to yours). All episodes were also uploaded on TV3’s YouTube, Instagram and Facebook page which broadcasted the series to a collective base of 8 million social followers & subscribers. With the cooking show being led by a well-known local influencer Sharifah Shahirah cooking up Ramadan recipes.

Not only did KFC repurpose its product, but Reprise found an innovative way to ride on Malaysia’s desire to cook at home, creating new occasions and new ways of consuming KFC. Thus, Reprise found its strategy to combat Malaysia’s newfound desire for home meals!

The lockdown has shown us tremendous opportunities for brands in the digital space. At a time where life as we knew it came to a stop, it is definitely inspiring to showcase how nothing could stop creativity. It proves that an honest, down-to-earth creative solution can connect in such a meaningful way with Malaysians. The results were beyond our wildest expectations!

Eddy Nazarullah, Creative Director, Reprise Digital

Results & Achievements

Reprise and KFC’s crusade to turn every Malaysian kitchen into a Kepci Kitchen exceeded all expectations. For its first objective of making more people order KFC Delivery, it was able to overshoot its targets by a mile with KFC’s incidence growing 15x while volume share growing 11x.

It was also able to hit its second objective which is to Make KFC more popular in the delivery market. According to Reprise, results were beyond the team’s wildest expectations. “Brand ever used” grew by 65% while “Most often brand” grew by 80%.

Lastly, it was able to get teens & young adults to switch to KFC. Teens visitations increased by +19%, while KFC’s competitor dropped a staggering -76%. A similar trend was also observed among young adults which grew by +24% but dropped by -68% for KFC’s competitor.

Kepci Kitchen won the hearts, minds, and stomachs of families, foodies, millennials, and celebrities alike. We were amazed by the noise and how it drove results, and this is solid proof of the agility of the agency partners and KFC team working hand in hand to adapt to the challenging circumstances. Its proof that despite adversity, we’re still able to find gems of inspiration.

Chan May Ling, Chief Marketing Officer of KFC

The campaign period ran from 2 April – 2 June, 2020.

Mumbai, India – As February concludes in a non-leap year, McDonald’s India has taken the liberty to celebrate the so-called ‘leapling’ birthdays, and give them the celebration they deserve through its new marketing campaign.

The Indian arm of the popular fast-food chain has initially released a short film, conceptualized by advertising agency DDB Mudra Group. The film depicts quirky highlights on what do people jest about celebrating the birthday on February 29. From their ‘actual age’ jokes to calling their birthday a holiday, the film concludes with a curated meal for these birthday celebrants to enjoy.

“Everyone loves their birthday. It’s the day the world makes you feel special. But for some, this happy day appears on the calendar only once in 4 years. And as a brand that believes that happiness is for everyone, we thought McDonald’s could make it special for these leaplings,” said Rahul Mathew, chief creative officer at DDB Mudra Group.

The promo meal called ‘Surprise Leap Meal’, offers leapling birthday celebrants an exclusive meal which includes vegetarian and non-vegetarian burgers, as well as desserts and shakes.

DDB-Mudras-Group-McDonald's-India
(Left) Rahul Mathew, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Mudra Group; (Right) Arvind RP, director – marketing and communications, McDonald’s India (West and South)

“McDonald’s has always aimed to create special moments for one and all. Unlike all others, the leaplings have to wait for 3 long years to celebrate their actual birthday. With this campaign, we hope to add some extra cheer to our leapling customers’ birthday week and make them feel special,” according to Arvind RP, director for marketing and communications at McDonald’s India, in West and South.

The ‘Surprise Leap Meal’ was initially rolled out last February 27, and will run until March 7, 2021. The exclusive meal is also only open to customers at select McDonald’s outlets in West and South.

Manila, Philippines – The Philippine headquarters of the now global fast-food brand Jollibee has released its Christmas ad in the country, which puts to the spotlight one of the few silver linings the pandemic has brought – more time with family.

The ad is one straight out of the “new normal,” where in the first few seconds of the ad, people walking in the streets with face shields on are seen.

The ad was made with no special fuss, but hits home – people have definitely been plagued by the massive lifestyle changes amid the pandemic, but on the other hand, it has also unexpectedly brought a positive effect, such as closer ties with the family.

Such sentiment is represented by the inner thoughts of a child, who looks out the window, longing to go back outside and play in the playground. Then the mellow beginning quickly changes into a happy and grateful disposition.

From the bothered musings of the child “Hangang kailan kaya ganito…” (Until when will this continue) that are delivered as a lyrcial song, the child breaks into a smile and an upbeat tune, now enumerating, still through a song, the good side of it all: the home standing in as the boy’s playground, creating bonding moments with his parents, grandparents, and siblings.

So where does Jollibee appear? In the ad, Jollibee’s signature food items – such as Chickenjoy and Jolly Spaghetti – are displayed as the anchor for the characters’ family time at dinner and merienda (snack time).

Within two days, the ad has already raked in 2.6M views, as of writing, on YouTube. Filipino viewers loved the film, with one commenting on Jollibee’s channel, “[Nice] commercial. [Showing] the positive side of this pandemic ?? [and] bringing family closer to each other ?”

Another user commented, “Jollibee never fails me with [its] commercial ✨??”

Jollibee has been known for proactively participating in designated calendar celebrations and using its special films to pay tribute on Valentine’s, Mother’s, and Grandparents day.

One of its films released on Valentine’s of this year called #CoupleGoals, garnered 21M views, which depicts the reality among seemingly perfect couples on social media.

Aside from the brand’s Christmas ad, the fast-food chain has also recently delighted its Filipino patrons with another year-end surprise when it brought back its signature one-third pound patty burger Champ, and the jumbo variant of its staple Burger Steak, Ultimate Burger Steak.