Influencer Marketing Is Out Of Control — So KFC Added Some Virtual Flavor *Updated*
Influencer Marketing never looked so finger lickin’ good, especially in 2019.
The industry, as a whole, is one of the fastest growing strategies that brands are using to further connect with their audience and KFC continues to shine brightest amongst the rest.
Instagram now has, roughly, a billion users per month and, on the platform alone, influencers are continuing to grow despite the skyrocketing saturation.
According to the influencer marketing firm Klear, 2 million sponsored Instagram posts went up in 2018, almost a 40% increase from the previous year.
That number looks to increase by the end of 2019 as more and more brands continue hopping onto bandwagon.
What fascinates us is that, just 9 years ago, it was still an untapped entity. It was in the year 2010 where total trust was just beginning to form, specifically around social media.
In less than a decade the rise has now started to bubble over to out of control proportions.
This brings us to one of our favorite food brands to follow on social, KFC (if you don’t, you’ll learn today, IG page, FB page, or YouTube channel. Our favorite, by far, is Twitter because of the wit, fun and creativity they infuse into their brand voice).
That wit was put to use in their latest campaign, featuring their newly elected Colonel Sanders influencer — the dude is incredibly cool.
He dawns a tattoo on his torso that’s enscribed with the words:
Secret Recipes For Success
AND he embodies much of what millennials + Gen-Z’s believe about themselves and the world.
Oh, but the biggest thing is…he’s not real — like not a real person at all.
That’s right, virtual is the new black.
We suspect the campaign was produced with the help of Wieden & Kennedy, the marketing agency that has helped them create amazing campaigns over the years, they created a Virtual Influencer to become the new face of the brand.
This influencer was created completely by computer-generated means as a way for the brand to further insert themselves into the world of influencer marketing while also trolling fans and the influencer community alike.
The idea for trolling the influencer community is not a new one.
Over the past 2 years, several brands have taken it upon themselves to poke a bit of fun at the rise of “influencers” and weight their opinion holds. Two of our favorites are Payless and Sauve.
Payless created an entirely fake brand called Palessi and, after renting an old Armani store, invited influencers to an exclusive shopping experience. They marked up shoes from their normal pricing of $20–$40 to upwards of $600.
By the end of the event, influencers had spent roughly $3000 on fake “luxury” goods, which Payless gave, back when all was said and done.
The stunt proved that influencers had no idea what actual luxury was and that if you could get them to believe in fictional facts around the “exclusivity” of a brand, you could create major endorsements to propel it to new heights (anybody remember Fyre Festival?).
Unilever shocked beauty influencers with their brand Suave’s creation of fake luxury brand Evaus (do you get it? Look at it hard).
After a few beauty products got a cool, minimal, redesign and premium pricing tag the elaborate ploy to showed millennial women that, a higher price tag doesn’t always mean a more quality product.
KFC plans to have the young gun to collaborate with other brands like TurboTax, Dr. Pepper, & Old Spice through the end of April.
The genius in this creation is that, the new Sanders serves as a virtual embodiment of the values of the brand and a subset of their overall customer base.
Furthermore this embodiment allows KFC to partner with brands that they never would otherwise. With this Virtual Influencer they can control the exact narrative, personality, and voice of each campaign, post, or advertisement.
The key focus, from KFC’s standpoint, is in the audience. With each new partnership KFC can reach a completely new audience segment they had no access to before.
From a branding perspective, the use of the influencer, boasting a satirical personality, accurately reflects the foundation of what KFC stands on.
The brand, which stays consistent in all forms of its digital marketing, actively seeks to promote laughter in both satirical and personable manners.
So, it’s no surprise that they hopped on the looming virtual influencer trend, in order to poke a little fun at themselves, the industry, and gain access to completely new audience segments.
Now, KFC does have a history of utilizing creative campaigns to let their personality shine while stealing their time in the cultural spotlight.
In October 2017, the brand did something a bit peculiar on their Twitter page — they cut down all of their followers to only 11 people. Now from a quick glance that didn’t mean much, so 99.99% of their audience thought nothing of it.
But then, a user, @edgette22, discovered the anomoly. Of the 11 people followed, five were Spice Girls and six guys were named Herb. While that coincidence seemed innocent from afar, the bigger piece is that KFC is known for their “blend of 11 herbs and spices.”
For figuring it out @edegette22 got a special shoutout from KFC and an amazing gift that rivals that of priceless artwork. It was a Big win for the overall brand, which garnered a ton of press.
If you’ve still been left hungry for more good finger lickin’ KFC content, we’ve got a few of our favorite things we have seen:
** Since this piece has been written KFC’s content strategy on Instagram has been filled with photos of their virtual influencer. The strategy has led to a consistent overall like per post of ~2–4x what it was, previously with the “Old Colonel Sanders.”
It has also led to anywhere from 150–500+ comments per post. The content has led to a significant boost in brand awareness and affinity due to the creativity and relatable manner they have presented the influencer.
As mentioned within the article, this has allowed KFC to utilize him to partner with new brands that wouldn’t otherwise make sense for them like Old Spice, Casper, TurboTax, Dr. Pepper, as well as bands and other digital influencers like Portugal the Man and Imma, respectively.
The overall humor and mockery of what KFC has done has led to a lot of opinions from both sides of the aisle, some sing their praises while others swear they won’t eat their until they can see the Old Sanders again, but one thing is clear, this campaign has been a success, if only for the brand awareness and affinity it has garnered.
