“People want to minimise time spent outside because of COVID”: KFC’s Moksh Chopra on the need for ‘7 minute express pickup’

KFC, an American fast food restaurant chain, recently released an ad campaign in India, featuring the legendary athlete PT Usha. KFC decided to use Usha, popularly nicknamed ‘The Queen of Speed’, to put forth its promise of ‘7 minute express pickup’. In the commercial, we see Usha working alongside KFC’s Colonel Sanders to deliver the customers’ orders.

Over a call, Moksh Chopra, chief marketing officer, KFC India, tells afaqs! that the millennials are the campaign’s target audience. The reason KFC decided to use Usha in the campaign is because research revealed that across generations, she’s associated with the idea of speed.

“Our core TG is millennials, but our user base is much wider than that,” adds Chopra.

KFC is not the first QSR brand to emphasise on timeliness in its campaign. For years, Domino’s Pizza (which belongs to Jubilant FoodWorks) has promised pizza delivery in 30 minutes or less, or else the pizza is free. In KFC’s case, if the order takes longer than seven minutes, then the customers will get a free piece of chicken, along with their orders.

Chopra explains that in order to fulfil the seven-minute delivery promise, the company had to focus on training its employees. “We had to streamline and reinforce our existing processes.”

“Takeout and pickup, as a channel, is becoming increasingly relevant for KFC, especially with people being hard pressed for time in today’s world. In these COVID times, people want to minimise the time they spend outside. That’s why we focused on our takeaway channel for this campaign. We already had people opting for takeaway, we just had to convert that into ‘express pickup’ for this campaign.”

During the first COVID wave last year, KFC introduced an option for its customers, where food would get delivered to their (parked) cars. Whether they chose to eat it then and there, or take it back home, was up to them. Chopra tells us that now, more and more people prefer takeaway orders.

According to him, the consumers are hard pressed for time and expect quick service from brands across categories offering deliveries. “Whether it is medicines, food, or even e-commerce and shopping, the consumers are more impatient now than ever before.”

Chopra quotes marketing consultant Harish Bijoor from an earlier afaqs! article. Bijoor talked about how time and money are the two important currencies in a consumer’s life right now. So, delivering something faster than consumers’ expectations, is bound to be valued by them.

Chopra also hopes that the worst is over, as far as the pandemic is concerned, and talks about how the company had to pivot to the digital medium to reach out to its customers.

“All of a sudden, in lockdown, people had to step into their kitchen to cook for the first time. During the first COVID wave, people were still ordering from KFC, but they were getting creative and finding different ways to use KFC’s menu items to create their own dishes (like tacos with chicken popcorn pieces).”

“The products that people consume, haven’t changed, but the way they consume (the products) has changed drastically due to the pandemic. For example, people still consume KFC food, but now, they’d rather opt for express pickup or contactless delivery, than sit in a KFC outlet and have it. We’re also seeing bigger orders now, when most people are still staying and working from home,” Chopra signs off.

Agency Credits:

Creatives:

Chief creative officer: Ritu Sharda

Group creative director: Shailender Mahajan

Senior creative director: Kingshuk Dey

Creative director: Aastha Gandhi

Associate creative director: Srikanta Behera

Copy supervisor: Kashif Shakeel

Account management:

Executive vice president: Atif Rahman

Vice president: Aditi Sobti

Management supervisor: Chandini Ahuja

Planning:

Head of strategic planning: Rohitash Srivastava

Senior planning director: Pritish Mukherjee

Production:

Production house: Ramesh Deo Production (RDP)

Director: Abhinay Deo

Senior executive producer: Apurba Sengupta

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