2019 Winners & Shortlists

THE POWER OF DATA

BrandYUM!
Product/ServiceKFC
EntrantHEARTS & SCIENCE Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryTravel, Leisure, Retail, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Idea Creation HEARTS & SCIENCE Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Media Placement HEARTS & SCIENCE Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Additional Company IMPACT BBDO Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Background.

How do you grow in a shrinking market? At KFC, we had faced a turbulent few years, but we knew there was an opportunity to grow. A downturn in sales, fierce competition, economic pressure and a drop-in media spend were only some of the challenges we had to overcome. Prior to 2018, KFC saw a decrease in sales and transactions despite having launched online ordering services across the markets we operated in the Gulf. Until that point our marketing tactics focused largely on offline media with minimal digital efforts and tracking. Our turnaround journey started off at the beginning of 2017 with clear objectives: • Establish an e-commerce presence • Achieve sales growth to 2% • Decrease the CPO by 25% • Migrate call center sales to online ordering

Describe the creative idea.

The idea was overdue and transformative to our business. We went out to build a data driven platform that can help us collect, analyze and active all our data to help us better understand what consumers loved about us and how we can best cater to them. We wanted to reduce ambiguity in our decision making and disrupting the way we went to market with our product bundles and distribution channels.

Describe the strategy.

Our strategic objective was to reduce advertising wastage by becoming data driven and begin the journey to having more relevant and personalized marketing with our customers. To do this, we housed all our store level sales data, call centre data, media data, website data and market level brand metrics into one place and started to uncover both consumer insights and market level insights. We then began to test various hypothesis in market by launching different campaign mixes and quickly evaluating the response until we came to a working test and learn model that yielded the best results.

Describe the execution.

First, we deployed a proper tech stack, after auditing the brands digital architecture. Second, we ran detailed media mix model across KFC historical sales data to better understand media’s impact on the business performance. Then we ensured that we were collecting all our data correctly and harmonized it with GA360. Our approach granted us deeper insight into our consumer journey, helping us optimize our product bundles, understand product performance on a local level and react quickly. This led us to move away from a last-click model, become data-driven and launch DCO across social. Our framework revolved around optimizing best performing strategies. We used various targeting techniques, based on brand affinity, interest, location and behavioral. This allowed us to identify relevant audiences, minimize waste, create lookalikes, and then retarget all our segments with precision. With this, we created a digital strategy tailored for each market according to their maturity.

List the results.

Our primary objective was increasing sales, with a sales growth of 2% specifically. We achieved a sales growth of 10% in 2018. This meant we over achieved our objective by 400%. We are also seeing a 15% month-on-month increase in revenue. Another objective was to reduce call center orders. Our efforts reduced call center orders by 20% and migrated them to online. On digital specifically, we reduced the Cost per Order by 94%. Aside from our business objectives, we are also seeing an overall impact on the KFC brand: • Brand perception metrics improved by 18% • Our ROI is only steadily increasing. Through econometrics modelling we’ve witnessed an increase: 9.5 (2018) vs 7.15 (2017) On the whole, consideration for the brand and revenue has increased, proving the effectiveness of putting data at the heart of any marketing strategy.

Credits

Name Company Role
Nadim Karam Hearts & Science Senior Director
Stacy Fisher Hearts & Science Head of Digital
Dana Sarkis Hearts & Science Head of marketing science
Sonia John Hearts & Science Associate Director - Digital
Hamza Madi Hearts & Science Associate Director
Mariam Kiwan Yum! Digita Media Manager
Ramzy Al Taher Hearts & Science Senior Executive
Ayat Mohammed Hearts & Science Account Executive
Achrafe Mami Hearts & Science Biddable Manager
Nour Montasser Hearts & Science Account Executive
Dimple Kumar Hearts & Science manager
Wasan Bishit Hearts & Science Account Executive
Ahmed Abayazeed Hearts & Science Senior Account Executive
Aiala Icaza Hearts & Science Account Executive
Farhan Shakir Hearts & Science Operations Manager
Ambrose Fernandes Hearts & Science Account Executive
Ali Jammal Hearts & Science Senior Executive
Ozge Zoralioglu Yum! CMO
Links
Website URL