It’s 11 in the morning and the manager who is in charge of social networks at KFC confesses over coffee that he hasn’t entered Twitter yet to see what his community manager has published. And he doesn’t care. The interview ends after 12 and Kerman Romeo continues without looking at him.
“Multinationals tend to control a lot what is done or not done online, but at KFC we have chosen to be spontaneous. We do not approve the content and what the community wants is published. I have total confidence in it and that has led us to be a brand that doesn’t look like a brand. We are just another user, an influencer,” says Romeo, director of Communications and Media for the fast food chain KFC.
This freedom that the person responsible for publishing on the networks has seems to work perfectly. In 2022, 30% of the interactions on social networks with brands in Spain were with the fried chicken firm. Specifically, from 2020 to 2022, the firm’s followers on Twitter have grown from 281,000 to more than 1.1 million. In fact, 6 out of 10 interactions with a brand on the Elon Musk network in Spain are with KFC. On TikTok, where the company began publishing in 2022, they already have more than 4.2 million followers and on Instagram they boast more than 800,000.
The question is forced: What is the secret of success? “I have to confess that there is a part that we have no idea about, we have to be humble. But it is also true that we have opted for a strategy that works very well and that stands out from other companies. We decided to hire a very young boy, almost without experience, and we opted for an Always In strategy, in which spontaneity, speed and a lack of planning prevail. We are very different from other brands and it is thanks to a young team that understands the current culture”, says Kerman Romeo.
This brand approach as an influencer has led the company to close collaboration agreements with firms (as a Dulceida would do well in their networks). These are collaborations to reach a larger audience, such as with the clothing brand Kaotiko, with the launch of t-shirts and sweatshirts, or with Grefusa for the launch of fried chicken flavored pipes. “We have sold more than two and a half million packs of pipes,” he adds.
The manager landed at KFC in November 2020 after passing through brands such as Pernod Ricard, Kellog’s or Coca Cola to be in charge of the communication and social media strategy of the company known for its fried chicken. “The restaurants had been closed and there was no income, so the marketing budget was very low. If I don’t have the capacity to invest in the media, how can I stand out? Well, through unpaid posts on networks. That’s where we created the new strategy and we decided to behave like one more user. The result is that on Twitter we are one more influencer and our investment has been zero euros”, he adds.
These figures also have an impact on restaurants, since according to NPD Crest, KFC’s market share from 2020 to 2022 in fast food restaurants has gone from 4.1% to 5.5%, having surpassed Domino’s and by behind McDonad’s, Burger King and Telepizza. “If we continue with this growth, we could surpass Telepizza as well. And it is that what we do in networks is actually part of a transversal change. We have changed the names of the products and offers to connect with popular culture, and in networks too we managed to generate business. It seems like a joke, but we put Eduardo’s name on Twitter on a chicken thigh and at Christmas, paying an extra you could take a Christmas decoration in the shape of a thigh. It was a success”.
As Romeo explains, they have managed to differentiate themselves from the competition with a very different personality. “If you think of KFC today, you think of a teenager who gets up at 1:00 p.m. we launch messages for a more general audience, in the long term the goal is to focus on Generation Z, as it is a generation that is growing up with KFC,” he says.
Both the aesthetics and the messages that the fast food company launches on platforms like TikTok are indeed very focused on the youngest and perhaps are not understood by older generations. But beyond worrying the American company, they assure that it is part of a clear strategy to conquer the lowest age groups and turn them into regular users of KFC.
“The older people do not have the habit of eating lunch or dinner in our restaurants and it is very difficult to change that. We understand that it is better to seek to attract young people and win them over so that they will be our customers for many years. It is a long-term strategy” , explains the KFC Media Director.
Despite the fact that Twitter is the pretty boy for the fast food company and TikTok the discovery of the year, the company does not forget other platforms such as YouTube or Twitch, where they also participate sporadically with more specific actions. “Twitch, for example, is a very complicated network, but we are also in it and with some success. The network that we practically do not give importance to is Facebook, and if we do it, it is for purely advertising interests. It has become a platform with little attractive to young people and we are not interested in age”.
In addition to its networks, KFC has been betting on technology in its stores in recent years, although it admits that McDonald’s is a great example of innovation in this segment, with 100% digital Kiosks in all its restaurants. “We continue to allow users to order personally at the cash desk, but it has been shown that the average ticket for orders at digital kiosks is higher, people spend more money, so the trend is clearly this.”
Likewise, the manager assures that the use of technology, especially in the back office, is increasing, and he imagines a near future in which the user will arrive at his premises and have 100% personalized offers thanks to technology. “In addition, innovation has to make eating in a restaurant a more sensory experience,” he adds.
