KFC's bonding with its consumers has surged, in stark contrast to other brands in the fast food sector, according to the study.
For six years KFC has been voted the most popular fast food and restaurant chain in South Africa (Brand and Branding award). Last year, it earned 41.8% of the votes, while its nearest rival, took only 17.1%. Market awareness of KFC, according to Adtrack, is sitting at around 99%.
In addition, it scored the fifth highest Brand Relationship Score across all categories in the same survey, topped only by the likes of Coca-Cola, SABC1, Vodacom and Telkom. This score, which takes into account awareness of, as well as attitude towards the brand, measures a brand's capacity to sustain sales from loyal customers.
KFC marketing director Nikki Rule says it's taken time, hard work and, most importantly, team work to get to this point.
KFC and Ogilvy have been working together to build the KFC brand in South Africa since 1998: "We're a small team on the KFC marketing side, managing a fairly complex communication calendar that spans multiple segments and because of that, we're highly reliant on our agency."
From a media perspective, KFC is one of the top 30 media spenders in the country. The AdEx figures from June 2003 to May 2004 clock the brand at number 28, spending over R80 million.
Ogilvy's Claire Howse says: "We're more like an extension of each other rather than an agency and its client. This takes years to build, and the more we work together the richer the relationship gets, but best of all it rubs off on brand.
"When you get to almost 100% awareness you can't just throw more money at marketing and advertising, you've got to really get stuck into the nuances of your relationships. Through KFC's advertising we talk to people who have to be terribly careful about how they spend each cent. We also talk to mom's who focus on holding families together, teens who want to be cool and independent, hurried professionals on the move, students who have no rules and a myriad others. The trick is to build these quite idiosyncratic relationships but retain the core truth of the brand that everybody loves, for a rainbow of reasons, over their lifetimes."
