Social Me
KFC Romania
Issue 49 | December 2018
Agency
MRM // McCann Bucharest
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Catalin Dobre Creative Directors Simona Suman, Costin Bogdan, Ion Cojocaru Art Director Corina Ionita Copywriter Mihai Vasile
Production Team
Production Company Video Edit Director Ion Cojocaru Photographer Anca Lazar Illustrators Cornel Zamfir, Catalin Constantin, Aurel Nistor, Sinboy, Film Production Radu Voinea, George Gugulici, Anca Oproiu, Cosmin Spiridon Music Blue Island Music, Daniel Soare, Petre Osman, Iolanda Girleanu, Cristian Calinescu Screenwriter Mihai Vasile Post Production Mirela Muresan, Stefan Samachis, Lucian Iordan, Andrei Cotarta, Oana Pruteanu, Victor Marinache Post Production Producers Alexandru Platon, Valentin Ruscan, Anca Vlasceanu, Marius Botirca, Lucian Asan, Carmen Sandu
Date
July 2018
Background
In order to reach their target audience in a new and relevant way, KFC launched an entertainment platform that used entertainment to preach authenticity as a lifestyle philosophy for young Romanians.
Stemming directly from KFCs brand essence, ‘Social Me’ was a web content series that set out to address one of the critical issues for young people today.
Idea
The problem with social media is that all too often Instagrammers and Facebookers seem to have impossibly perfect lives. They work harder on their fake lives than working on their real selves.
‘Social me’ was a series of four webisodes between seven and eight minutes long following a girl who has given up her real name to be known as Social Me.
She uses the people around her (and the family dog) to reach her daily quota of likes until, horror of all horrors, they start to unfriend her. Eventually, she finds an old typewriter and writes a manifesto on being real, the very opposite of a social media post.
Posters launched the series and a cinema première was attended by celebs and influencers.
Designed and directed to live on teens’ mobiles, the show was promoted and broadcast on IGTV, making it the first branded content from Romania to be created specifically for the new platform.
Results
The show prompted much comment in social media. Important influencers even began sharing personal details of how they faked their content to project their personas and idealised lives.
The four episodes got over six million views, 36 million impressions and over 5,000 positive comments. KFC’s YouTube channel increased its subscribers by 30 times. Moreover, the third episode got an 80% complete rate view, beating all previous records in terms of video - for both the brand and the agency.
This put KFC at the heart of a quest for authenticity, stemming directly from its brand values.
Our Thoughts
We live in a world of paradox. The smartphone is not just a device that connects people in ways that were unimaginable just 20 years ago, it also alienates them from each other. Simon Sinek has been urging people to put their phones away for several years now (most recently: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=C75NyXiiJck) because, as he says, millennials are in the grip of an addiction. Every time you get a ‘like’ or a smile emoji, there is a small dopamine hit in the brain. It is exactly the same buzz gamblers get when they win.
Justin Rosenstein, who created the ‘Like’ button, has removed Facebook from his mobile because he fears the psychological effects of social media.
This theme is one that will continue to gather momentum. Congratulations to KFC for the strategy and to McCann Romania for executing it in films that are compellingly watchable.