This story was originally published in the 2024 Winter issue of strategy magazine

By Megan Haynes

In Canada, KFC has a unique brand recognition problem. 

The QSR’s giant red-and-white bucket, Colonel Sanders and “Finger Lickin’ Good” slogan are all widely recognizable touchpoints. But compared to its global counterparts, the fried chicken chain’s Canadian arm struggles with market penetration, says Katherine Bond-Debicki, CMO of the Yum! Brands subsidiary.

In most countries, KFC lands in the top-three for QSR market share, and it’s the fastest growing chain in several regions – not just by sales but also footprint. In comparison, while KFC is the top fried chicken restaurant in Canada, it barely cracks the top-10 in the QSR category as a whole. 

“The Canadian market, along with the U.S., is probably the most hyper competitive QSR environment we see in the world,” Bond-Debicki says. “You have big burger boys, but you also have this rapid proliferation of fried chicken specialists. And what makes North America a little bit unique in that specialty zone is they actually have scale.” 

This created a growth problem for the marketer: how do you act as a challenger brand when you’re already a highly recognizable name with a strong legacy? 

The “Sorry, Utensils” platform is an investment in the QSR’s brand by Bond-Debicki.

Bond-Debicki began her career at P&G in Ireland before joining KFC as a brand manager in 2014. She moved up the ranks before returning to Canada in 2017 as a senior brand manager. In 2021, Bond-Debicki took on the mantle of CMO to lead the entire marketing portfolio, including brand/retail communications, omni-channel marketing, as well as food R&D. 

At the time of her promotion, the company as a whole was reflecting on its challenges and identifying the path forward. COVID-19 put a renewed focus on family dinner, and KFC benefited from the trend. However, “as we come out of the pandemic, we know those habits are going to shift,” she says. “How do we take the power of [those habits], but ensure we keep on top of the relevance of how people consume today?”

The franchise had previously been hyper-focused on retail communication to the detriment of brand marketing, and Bond-Debicki recognized a need for an overall shift. 

“Retail is always urgent and important,” she says, and, as a result, brand communication had been neglected for “years.” 

“In my very honest opinion, we didn’t have a clear brand identity,” she adds. “We had a lot of very powerful, unique brand codes that we leveraged to make sure we had attribution. But we were inconsistent with how we showed up emotionally, visually, verbally.”

Her strategy started with a re-organization of the 20-person marketing team splitting the retail/brand communications pillar in two, with Bond-Debicki creating roles focused exclusively on brand-building. Budgets and resources were shuffled to make a focus on brand communications possible, which meant the other pillars – retail, omni-channel and R&D – had to do with less. 

When KFC killed off its old fries, and introduced a new potato chip, the brand bid condolences during a live-streamed “fry funeral.”

“We had to look at where we could reallocate resources to invest in brand. That meant being more efficient and focused on where we spend, not just from a communications end, but across the entire marketing mix.” 

 The company’s foray into brand-building started in 2022. It picked up the “Love at First Bite” platform from the U.K. office, with a campaign running in Canada on TV, digital and through an influencer push. With creative from Mother London, the creative focused on the anticipatory moment before someone eats a piece of fried chicken. While the message resonated with Canadians, the creative also fit in with Bond-Debicki’s broader plan to re-focus on brand-building. 

A year later, in September 2023, KFC launched a made-in-Canada brand platform – it’s first major brand push in years. Working with new creative AOR Courage, as well as media buyer Wavemaker and PR firm Narrative, the QSR rolled out an apology campaign for utensils. 

Leaning on the iconic “Finger Lickin’ Good” slogan (which Bond-Debicki helped “retire” during the pandemic for obvious reasons), the “Sorry Utensils” campaign “channels the spirit of the Colonel,” she explains. 

Told from the perspective of abandoned forks and knives, with the song “All Out of Love” playing forlornly in the background, the creative is cheeky and doesn’t take itself seriously. 

With a youthful and diverse cast, “Sorry Utensils” ran on TV, print, radio, OOH and digital, and was specifically designed to speak to both new and younger Canadians to recruit them into the brand and drive consideration. The campaign ran for five weeks and was extended for an additional seven to support the launch of its chicken nuggets. It will continue to be used as the broader brand platform into 2024 and beyond. 

Even with a renewed focus on brand-building, Bond-Debicki recognizes the need for retail communications.

Every Tuesday, KFC has been selling its chicken tenders at outrageously low prices, much to the dismay of the Colonel.

Fitting the challenger mentality, many of its recent executions have been buzzy stunts targeted at niche audiences – transforming the underside of a highway overpass into a winter basketball court to win over Raptors’ fans; turning Colonel Sanders into a character in video game Street Fighter 6 to attract gamers; or hijacking the conversation around the debut of McDonald’s chicken sandwich to lure its competitor’s customers via “Fixed It.”

“Historically, our consumer base has been grounded in families in Canada,” Bond-Debicki says. “We were absolutely a family-centred brand and a sharing business for decades.” That success on family-sized meals has come at a cost – there’s a perception that, since KFC feeds many, it’s expensive (especially if you’re eating for one). To unlock incremental growth, the team built out the value messaging and conveyed that it offers affordable meal options as well as family-sized fare. 

KFC saw big success with its value campaign, “Not Everybody’s Happy, But You Will Be,” where it promoted “Twosdays” (the brand’s Tuesday $2.99 promo menu) with a tongue-in-cheek campaign that brought the Colonel back in a big way. 

The long-dormant mascot came out of retirement to admonish KFC for selling his chicken at such a low price. He took to social media to complain directly to consumers, he defaced billboards, and he even took out a full-page ad in The Globe and Mail to rant about the pricing strategy. The campaign was built on the message that the value was so good, that while the consumer would be pleased, someone was losing out. 

Launched in April 2023, the “Not Everyone’s Happy” campaign was the brand’s most successful promotional vehicle to date, Bond-Debicki says. KFC not only saw a 100% increase in value consideration, but also saw a double-digit increase in quality perception. 

The platform was revived in the summer to help promote the season-long $5 sandwich campaign, with the focus shifting from the Colonel to its competitors (including Wendy’s and Burger King) being unhappy. “It was one of our longest value campaigns ever,” Bond-Debicki shares. 

The sandwich push, which ran on TV, OOH, digital and print, was also part of a larger effort to unlock new meal occasions and tap into the burgeoning chicken sandwich wars. The “summer of sandwiches,” as Bond-Debicki calls it, featured new flavours – including a limited time BBQ – as well as a promotional focus on Twisters (wraps), a product that has long been on the menu, but rarely received marketing support. 

The brand paid tribute to a fellow “king of buckets” (former Raptor Lebron James) after the athlete broke the NBA’s all-time scoring goal.

As for its fries, KFC decided to yank the less-than-desired product entirely and replace it with an entirely new seasoned fry. After receiving negative critique from consumers on the menu item, the QSR set up a mock funeral for its “soggy fries” that people don’t seem to have much love for. 

Canadians had the opportunity to pay their “final disrespects” as a Colonel Sanders-branded hearse drove around Toronto proclaiming “R.I.P. old KFC fries.” Those who were unable to bid their farewell in person, were invited to tune into a live-streamed funeral. The campaign was designed by Courage to have fun with the vitriol that has been levied against the brand, leveraging real tweets and critiques to bring the idea to life.

Going into 2024, Bond-Debicki says the plan is to test out even more menu options, and other similar fun brand partnerships to lure sandwich lovers in. 

“I think we have a menu modernization job to do,” she says. “Particularly around how we wrap our chicken in modern sides and packaging to ensure we’re relevant, to ensure we’re permissible and we make people feel really good when they eat us. We have ‘pride in fried.’ That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have choice.” 

So, alongside its renewed focus on wraps, the restaurant also launched boneless nuggets in September 2023 – the first time it had that product on the menu – and increased its focus on lower-calorie options. It also played with some fun limited-time offers, such as a gravy-lover’s sandwich for the 2022 holiday season, and in 2023 it launched the “Festive Chicken Sandwich,” which blends holiday flavours such as cranberry and stuffing with the KFC fried chicken. 

Immersing the brand into gaming culture, KFC brought the Colonel to life in Street Fighter 6.

The brand is also looking at freshening up its retail footprint, exploring an increased presence in downtown urban cores – where it’s target demographic of both new and young Canadians increasingly live – as well as giving some of its 642 restaurants a new look. 

“I think, without a doubt, we have some dated restaurants that need to be modernized,” Bond-Debicki says. “We have some restaurants out there that are so old, they’re trendy again.”

The CMO is excited about the future of the brand and Canada. “We’re only getting started,” she explains. “It’s not just a marketing journey, it’s absolutely going to be through the business. And I can’t wait for people to see that transformation start to hit market.”