With Gen Z turning to virtual environments to hang out with friends, KFC China partnered with DENTSU CREATIVE China to find a new way to win over young consumers. Enter the KFC Re:Store — the brand’s new metaverse home, complete with avatar merch, a virtual pet and even its own currency.
KFC Re:Store not only reimagined KFC’s retail footprint for one of the world’s largest economies, but also picked up a Bronze Lion in Creative Commerce at Cannes Lions 2023, becoming one of the four winners that represented China’s excellence in creativity this year.
The team sat down with us to unpack the insights and creative process behind the work. You may also get the story from Modern Advertising’s interview with Chris Chen, Chief Creative Officer of DENTSU CREATIVE China when they were in Cannes at dentsu beach house on the awards announcement day.
WHERE DID THE IDEA OF KFC RE:STORE COME FROM?
We’ve been teaming up with KFC since 2015, when they first embarked on their digital transformation. In the first five years, we have the honour to be deeply involved in turning the business model from 100% cash payment into a 100% digital business while building their membership system from scratch, to the whopping almost 400 million it stands at today (by Q2 2023). We’re very proud to see KFC become one of the most innovative and popular fast-food brands in China.
KFC is the largest, most successful restaurant brand in China, with nearly 10,000 restaurants across China (by Q2 2023). Like every fast-food business, they rely on casual footfall. Young consumers hanging out with friends are key audiences who must be constantly recruited. But the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to the booming stay-at-home economy, reshaping the entire retail landscape.
We had to ask ourselves, if young consumers are less likely to visit bricks and mortar, how do we show up in their world and reconnect with them? As a team, we came up with “KFC Re:Store” — an engaging retail store, hosted on popular social media platform Super QQ Show, with innovations that go beyond brand communications and experiences, but trigger business transactions.
WHY DO YOU THINK MORE YOUNG PEOPLE ARE HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS VIRTUALLY NOW?
Statistics show that the time spent in quarantine, has made young Chinese consumers less enthusiastic to engage in outdoor activities. Instead, around half of them opt to stay at home, somewhat similar to Otaku — a community of which 70% tend to socialize online instead of real-life dining experiences with friends and family .
Far more than any other market, young consumers in China are more willing to invest in virtual avatars. In our research, we learned that young people are increasingly concerned with their virtual identities, with over 60% believing that their identities on social media, in games and the metaverse are as meaningful as who they are in real world .
THE TEAM HAS WORKED WITH KFC ON SEVERAL EXCITING PROJECTS IN THE PAST, HOW DID THIS IDEA LAND WITH THEM?
We’ve come a long way since KFC appointed us as their creative partner nine years ago, and we’re immensely proud of the progress we’ve made together. Before the pandemic, KFC gained rapid growth in 15 consecutive quarters. For KFC, we are more of a partner, far beyond a vendor.
Once we had the initial concept for Re:Store, we immediately reached out to Tencent’s metaverse development team — TiMi Studio Group — knowing that Tencent has a wealth of knowledge in launching metaverse platforms on QQ. After rounds of communications and liaisons, we dug deep into the project to explore possibilities, made proposals and won strong support from our client.
WHAT TECH DID YOU USE TO BRING THIS CONCEPT TO LIFE?
Using Unreal Engine 4 game technology, we started with the character design, dynamic performance, space experience and online-to-offline interaction mechanism. After four months of development, and many rounds of adjustments and revisions alongside Tencent’s technical team, KFC Re:Store was officially launched.
TELL US ABOUT THE UNIQUE MERCHANDISE, CURRENCY AND OTHER FEATURES YOU BUILT FOR USERS TO ENJOY?
When we started planning Re:Store, we had 4 questions:
Does the brand need to look the same in the real world as in the virtual world?
Does the brand need to have an NPC to interact with consumers, and who would this be?
If we want to create a space for brands to engage consumers, what kind of experience should it be?
How do we seamlessly connect online and offline beyond the online experience only?
With all of this in mind we decided to create a unique currency for users — Chicken Coins. We also designed exclusive virtual KFC fashion collections and furniture, that users can purchase with their Chicken Coins.
In order to allow consumers to interact more with the brand, Colonel Sanders was introduced as an NPC. Users can come to chat with the virtual Colonel Sanders anytime and receive daily Chicken Coins.
For those looking for a feathered friend, we also created Fengwan – an adorable Phoenix for users to adopt as a virtual pet.
In five weeks, KFC saw over 850 million interactions with the virtual Colonel Sanders, 6,690,000 items of virtual clothing and 11 million items of virtual furniture sold for their avatars and spaces. These consumers have effectively become free ambassadors of the brand.
HOW HAVE YOU EXPANDED ON THE WORK SINCE LAUNCH?
From the very beginning of campaign planning, we’ve considered this as a long-term plan. Since its launch in July last year, Re:Store has released a series of themed campaigns for Christmas, Chinese New Year, Valentine’s Day and the newly-launched summer campaign — just like those in the real world.
KFC Re:Store is not one single campaign, but a brand new retail platform created for KFC in a parallel world.
KFC RE:STORE DENTSU CREATIVE TEAM
