KFC Face from Space, Yum!

In the Monday's Guardian KFC was featured for winning the MEGA (Media Guardian Innovation Awards) for best PR campaign. The campaign was concerned with making the rebranding of KFC into a "global talking point", as it became the first brand visible from space.

What the whole campaign was basically about was to create a record-breaking 87,500 square feet, updated Colonel Sander's logo, in the Nevada dessert. Allbussines.com states that the logo featured Sanders in a new costume, featuring an apron instead of his traditional suit, in order to symbolizes the home-style culinary heritage of the brand. All to remind customers that KFC is always in the kitchen cooking delicious, high-quality, freshly prepared chicken by hand, just the way Colonel Sanders did 50 years ago.

What is interesting about this campaign is that it was so simple, only carried out online and attracted enormous amounts of media coverage. According to the team behind the campaign they made it so simple since the only thing KFC had really done was to update Colonel's look, and since he is already a global icon there was nothing to do besides go galactic...

The campaign was a massive success, with 230 000 people accessing the KFC website on the launch day alone. According to the Guardian the campaign was featured in media, like for example, NBC's Today Show, Jay Leno and David Letterman, and was also featured in many different UK media channels. The advertising costs for the same amount of coverage have been estimated to be $45m.

By using online channels to promote the campaign, especially through social media websites, the PR team was harnessing the power of the web in order to attract customer attention. Customers was encouraged to go to the KFC website, and they could also zoom in the logo from outer space via Google earth. The zoom application, videos of the building of Colonel's face and a shot of the complete logo were also seeded on to site like YouTube, BoingBoing and Google Video.

Some of the motivations from the Guardian jury were that "The face from space stunt was a bold idea for a global audience with the rebrand key message coming through strongly. It enabled the brand to gain worldwide attention without the complication of language." Another one was "But the most significant achievement of this campaign was that it succeeded in gaining reams of publicity around the world, and became a talking point as all the best PR ideas do. It was an incredibly simple idea that managed to demonstrate the global power of PR."

The fact that the campaign was covered globally by media in, for example the US, the UK and China, shows how incredibly effective and important online media channels are for a successful PR campaign...