2024 Bronze Data and Insight

Agency: Mindshare UK

Client: KFC

Entry Title: Fast Food to Fast Data

Executive Summary

KFC launched its own delivery service in late 2022. Now it wanted a more granular understanding of the factors affecting individual stores’ own delivery sales, together with a largely automated media-buying solution.

Strategy

The solution was called District Robot. Much more detailed store criteria were incorporated than in 2022: rural vs urban; high street vs mall vs retail estate; drive-through vs counter; proximity to competitors; store size; catchment area; population demographics and propensity to eat at QSR (Quick Service Restaurants); all down to postcode level.

These factors were weighted to their influence on sales and the result was 640 target districts, which were each assigned a weighting score to prioritise media investment. Unsurprisingly, population size remained a key factor but district characteristics such as business parks, ethnically diverse metropolitan living and older farming communities were other important factors of driving owned delivery sales.

This was ingested into ‘Unmissable’ buying solution to adapt media delivery, pushing media investment towards stores with the greatest potential in near-real time. A completely tailored geo-model based on extensive social and demographic data points.

Creativity

With around 1,000 stores and a large number of potential factors influencing sales, hundreds of thousands of data points were ingested, arriving at an output ranking each district by its potential for growth in own delivery sales.

Unmissable is a cross-channel geo-buying solution to access TV, display, video, audio and digital OOH via a single-entry point. One challenge of buying media this way is the varying degrees of impact of each channel; a single TV exposure is not the same as a single display exposure, for example. Another challenge is taking into consideration the availability of media channels in each given area.

To overcome these hurdles an ‘Unmissable Factor’ is calculated to arrive at an equivalent exposure to media. Each district postcode receives media adding up to that factor, using different combinations and ‘impact ratios’ of the media available in the district postcode. Uniquely, the Unmissable factor was amended by district postcode depending on the score that District Robot assigned to it. Media within a district could be altered in near-real time to keep overall delivery within the target range.

Results

Results were judged in three areas: growth of KFC’s own delivery service, acquisition and incremental sales. The campaign achieved:

• a 10.2% share of owned delivery sales within the campaign period vs a 7% target
• more than 2 million new customer sign-ups versus 1.8 million target
• £620,000 in incremental own delivery sales; the initial target was £216,000

The approach has been rolled out across more KFC campaigns, setting a benchmark for the quick implementation of reactive, store-level support.

The Team

KFC - Phoebe Syms, Brand Manager, Brand and Retail UKI - Aislinn Campbell, Marketing Manager, Brand and Retail - Suzanne Perry, Head of Media, Media

Mindshare UK - Krishen Joshi, Head of Marketing Science, Marketing Science - Laura Harley, Client Director, Live Planning - Jessica May, Client Director, Client Leadership - Renee Crabbe, Account Manager, Media Planning

GroupM Nexus UK - Harry Kent, Director, Client Leadership, Matt Whittle, Director, Marketing Science