KFC UK&I

Cooking Up a Game Plan

A heritage brand with a distinctive personality, KFC UK&I has remained relevant for over sixty years because innovation has been a key component of its global strategy. And with demand for fried chicken reaching an all-time high in recent times, KFC UK&I was eager to capitalise on the UK’s increased appetite for its offering.

Priding itself on being surprising, culturally sharp and ‘unmistakably KFC’, KFC UK&I knows the importance of showing up where the next generation is spending its time and shaping culture. With Gen Z at the heart of Snapchat’s community, the platform has been a fundamental part of KFC UK&I’s media strategy since 2020, helping the brand stay relevant and connected to younger audiences.

Recently, KFC UK&I wanted to understand exactly how much value Snapchat was adding, so it worked with Mindshare and Smartly to run Predictive Budget Allocation (PBA) across five campaigns – four focused on incremental reach, one on cost per action. 

Rather than lock in a fixed share of budget for Snapchat from the start, KFC UK&I split spend evenly across channels and let Smartly's PBA shift investment toward whichever one was actually earning it.

Extra Crispy Execution

Smartly's Brand Pulse gave KFC UK&I and Mindshare a live read on where each channel was creating incremental value – and Predictive Budget Allocation acted on it, automatically shifting spend to match. That meant Snapchat had to earn its share of budget campaign by campaign, rather than start from a fixed split. 

Across the four reach campaigns, Snapchat generated positive incremental reach every time. On the fifth, optimised for cost per action, it proved it could work lower down the funnel too – adding conversions while cutting CPA against the no-PBA estimate.

A Bucketful of Results

Across the five campaigns, Smartly's PBA helped Snapchat deliver 1.33M estimated incremental reach. A dedicated sales campaign added 1,052 estimated conversions too, at a 3.2% lower CPA.

Efficiency gains held up campaign by campaign: 20.6% lower cost per cumulative reach on Pickles, 10.7% lower on Zingers, 11.8% lower on Football Bucket. Tenders Bucket was the outlier – still delivering +131.8K incremental reach, even as its cost per cumulative reach rose 17.1%.

Together, the results have made incremental reach and cost-per-action optimisation through PBA part of KFC UK&I's business-as-usual approach. Snapchat's proven it's no limited-time offer – it's on the permanent menu.