KFC invites customers to kick a** with the Colonel in Street Fighter 6 /

It’s game time / By aligning itself with a game that holds a significant esports presence and nostalgic status, KFC was able to reach a sizeable audience of potential new customers and make its brand relevant to them. In addition to the 2 million global sales the game has already achieved, it will form the battleground for the Capcom Cup, an esports tournament that streams live on YouTube and Twitch and holds a hefty total prize pot of $2m. While the Colonel’s character is unlikely to feature in the tournament, by moving quickly to get involved with the game during the opening months of its launch, when anticipation and engagement is high, KFC Canada is capitalising from the anticipation and engagement around the new title.

In recent years KFC has made numerous plays to connect its brand with the gaming community. In 2019, the QSR giant launched an AI based predictor service for live competitive League of Legends games. Around the same time it also created a Japanese-inspired dating simulator game. In an interview with Contagious, Andrea Zahumensky, chief marketing officer at KFC US, explained the brand’s association with gaming: ‘We absolutely look at ways to be relevant in the broader pop culture conversation and be entertaining for new customers. Our long-term strategy is to continue to serve our core customers while reaching new audiences by making the Colonel a part of pop culture, ultimately creating a new generation of KFC diners.’

The gaming industry has become a big marketing opportunity for brands beyond KFC. A Statista report projected that in Canada, revenue in the in-game advertising market will reach $500m in 2023, with compound annual growth estimated to be 4.7% across 2023-27. For context, TV advertising revenue in Canada in 2022 was $1.2bn, but this figure had fallen by 44% vs 2021.

Access all areas / For KFC, hijacking Street Fighter 6 was a low-budget way to build buzz and reinforce its most distinctive asset. As KFC’s Zahumensky told us previously, ‘Compared to our competitors, we tend to have smaller marketing budgets, so we are constantly looking for ways to make our dollars work harder for us.’

An official partnership with the game could have been costly, so instead the brand used the same tools that any player has at their disposal to bring Colonel Sanders into the game in a way that made it fun for players to engage with the brand. Tom Kenny, chief strategy officer at Courage, said: ‘With the introduction of Recipes to Street Fighter 6, we saw an opportunity to connect with gamers organically through our most iconic brand asset, and create a value exchange that’s authentic to the gameplay itself.’

Putting the Colonel at the front and centre of the campaign also aligned with KFC’s ongoing strategy to champion its distinctive asset, a move it calls ‘re-colonelisation’. ‘Our underlying strategy is finding new, interesting and provocative ways to make Colonel Sanders a part of pop culture,’ said Zahumensky. ‘Over the years, the Colonel has been an inflatable floatie, WWE wrestler and a cat climber.’