Meet the Managers: Josh Benge, KFC
For the second instalment of our #MeetTheManagers series, we caught up with KFC’s Brand Engagement Manager, Josh Benge.
KFC is one of the world’s most recognisable fast food chains, specialising in fried chicken. Although the HQ is in Kentucky, the restaurant chain has had a presence in the UK since 1965 and is now a mainstay in high streets across the country.
Josh joined the organisation back in 2015 as a Community Manager, before becoming the Brand Engagement Manager in 2019. Most recently Josh has been involved in the launch of the “KFC Gaming” brand and the development of the KFConsole, which outperformed major competitors such as Xbox.
1) In your eyes, what makes a piece of social content great?
Often, it’s timing. There are a lot of prerequisites that it has to hit first — native to platform, on-brand, on-culture, tone of voice tone of voice tone of voice. However, if you have all of those things, it’s the timing that makes it fly. You have to be quick which requires the right set up and trust from the rest of the business.
2) Breakdown the process you go through from generating initial ideas for content to posting on your channels.
First, we brainstorm with a big, wide team including people from other departments. Everyone uses social personally so ideas can come from everywhere! They tend to be quite fun so people are usually keen to join. Chocolate also helps. We’ll do a month at a time, looking at what products, seasonal events, sporting events, film releases, game releases, weird days are happening. You name it, we’ll consider it. We all throw out ideas and bounce off each other and write up absolutely everything.
Then we follow up with a deep dive creative session with a tighter team, just Social and PR. Where we drill into the ideas, pick our front runners and develop them into something we can produce. From there we decide if we can produce in-house or will need to brief an agency.
That being said, a lot of our most successful content has been dreamt up on the spot after seeing an opportunity pop up!
3) What one trend do you think should be on everyone’s radar over the next 12 months?
TikTok would be the easy answer. However more widely it’s the need for video content in general. It’s been moving this way for quite some time but now with the explosion of TikTok, Facebook’s algorithm change and shifting media consumption habits it’s now unavoidable.
4) Name one tool could you not live without when it comes to managing your companies social media?
Social listening tools are invaluable. We use a few although Crimson Hexagon is one of the best we use. Our social listening reports inform social content, social strategy, TV campaigns, new products etc. etc. We use them across the entire business to see what people are saying about us and how we can adapt.
5) What is the one piece of social media best practice that you swear by but rarely see followed?
Make sure it makes sense for your brand! Too often brands jump on trends that have zero relevance and stand out like a sore thumb. Jump on the trends, but make sure your brand has a right to do so. There are clever ways you can do this. KFC has no real right getting involved with the new iPhone release, unless of course, you create a mock advert and replace the phone with a piece of chicken… https://twitter.com/KFC_UKI/status/1039650041554583552?s=20
6) What’s the best piece of advice you’d give a social media manager with limited resources?
Think like an influencer. Most of them have spent very little money to amass huge followings. There are always ways you can be smart within social.
7) Can you give us an example of a social media crisis that you’ve had to handle, and how you went about it?
Well we ran out of chicken once… You could call that a crisis. My advice for any crisis, BE HUMAN. Too often brands resort to corporate, robotic responses as the business panics and everything becomes restricted. Always stay true to your tone of voice and make your language as human as possible. We owned up to it being our fault, apologised to our customers and our staff and literally told them we FCK’d up. People were exceptionally sympathetic to us. It helps that we made them laugh.
8) How do you navigate unrealistic expectations or requests from colleagues who might not necessarily have the strongest grasp on social?
Constructively. Be honest, feedback that it’s unrealistic and explain why. If you can, offer an alternative. We make a point to regularly knowledge sharing and up-skilling our colleagues often as the whole business should be thinking about social!
9) What are your favourite accounts to follow on social media, and why?
Innocent is my favourite brand account. Their tone of voice is always absolutely spot on. Their creativity and understanding of the platforms is second-to-none and they make the brand seem so human and accessible. Personally, it’s no-context Eddie Hearn. I laugh every single time.
A big thank you to Josh for these great tips. If you do have any questions feel free to reach out to the Social Misfits Media team at info@socialmisfitsmedia.com.
Here at Social Misfits Media we support our clients, friends and partners by offering practical and tangible advice on how to run their social media communities successfully. We do this through our publications, our #MisfitsLive events and now through our new #MeetTheManagers blog series.
In this series, we’re connecting with the Social Media Managers responsible for running the online communities of globally recognised organisations. We’re asking them to share their top tips and tricks to help those managing communities of smaller organisations, who may not have the same resources and budgets.
