Breaking records for KFC UK & Ireland’s 2022 World Cup campaign
As part of the brand’s World Cup 2022 activation, KFC challenged us to use the power of reactive social to hero KFC Delivery across Instagram and X. Our response? KFC’s top X post of 2022 (and second biggest ever), a gamified Instagram Story format that sent engagement rates skyrocketing and cemented brand love in an ultra-competitive - and at times controversial - space.
The brief
The 2022 FIFA World Cup was a key period for KFC to promote their delivery offer. Using the power of reactive social, our brief was to drive engagement and consideration by aligning KFC Delivery with key in-game, sporting and cultural moments as they happen throughout the World Cup.
The results
18m organic impressions
440k organic engagements
35.88% engagement rate (Instagram Stories)
126k total views (X)
10k mentions
Our solution
Our World Cup organic social strategy revolved around three key objectives: attention, advocacy, and association. We aimed to capture attention by injecting our distinctive “loveable rogue” tone into reactive fan moments. For advocacy, we took a humorous and bold approach, particularly on contentious fan topics. Our association goal was to make unexpected appearances during significant World Cup moments. At the core of the wider brief was driving awareness for KFC Delivery, so we inserted messaging around this and other menu items where appropriate.
As the perfect second-screening platform for football fans, X was the driving force behind this campaign. Reactivity was crucial, so we set up a game room to live tweet reactive content as it happened for 13 games, including the biggest matches of the tournament.
Among our campaign highlights, the standout was our Cristiano Ronaldo reaction post. It became our top-performing X post for 2022, amassing over 12.9 million impressions and 238,000 engagements, making it KFC’s second most successful X post ever. The post achieved virality on social media and garnered attention from major news outlets like Apple News, TalkSport, and the Manchester Evening News.
Our David De Gea post also performed well, generating 1.3 million organic impressions, 42,000 organic engagements, and a 3.1% engagement rate. We anticipated its success due to the divided opinions among Manchester United fans about the player, and our immediate response sparked attention and advocacy.
To highlight KFC Delivery on X, we employed a “reply with #KFCDelivery” giveaway mechanic, reinforcing the brand’s connection to World Cup celebrations while fostering advocacy and increasing awareness of KFC’s delivery service.
Instagram Stories served as an ideal platform to associate KFC with the World Cup using native features. We introduced three unique formats: Milestone Moments, The People’s Pundit, and The Ultimate Match-up.
Whether we offered a free KFC Delivery for competition milestones, or let fans predict what was to come, these formats amassed 31,184 engagements and over 215,000 views.