Where the paid awareness budget went
| Top campaigns by spend | Spend | Impressions | Investment role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disruptive Value · $8 Boxes | $466K | 91M | Awareness for value |
| News · Upside Down Burger | $346K | 62M | Awareness for LTO |
| Christmas in July Brand | $329K | 69M | Awareness brand |
| Disruptive Value · $6.95 Tenders | $318K | 73M | Awareness for value |
| News · Zinger Kebab | $220K | 51M | Awareness for LTO |
| All sales-objective campaigns combined | $23K | 3M | Sub 1% of total |
Discover
Where they first see itConsider
What stops scroll, what they trustConvert
What triggers the tripAudience side-by-side: who's in the room vs who we want to recruit
KFC-attached audience
n = 1,819Cold audience (recruit)
n = 65Vox pops — what brought them in today
15 of 19 said "last minute". Tower Burger named 5+ times.| Campaign | Creator views | Organic reach | Total engagement | Resonance · shares per 100K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zinger Nachos | 620K | 9K | 39,869 | 3,406 — winner |
| 30 Nuggets / Tattoo | 567K | 3.26M | 50,542 | 1,265 |
| Protein / Big Bro | 1.5M | — | 45,397 | 1,031 |
| Zinger Kebab | 2.1M | — | 34,841 | 984 |
| Tower Burger | 2.8M | 8K | 61,216 | 799 — vox pop hero |
| Stranger Things | 2.8M | 56K | 43,790 | 766 |
| Zinger Banh Mi | 5.1M | — | 56,032 | 590 |
| Liquid Gold | 6.4M | 2.9M | 62,264 | 280 — bought reach |
| Habanero H&C | 3.7M | — | 37,466 | 272 |
| Sweet Tokyo | 2.3M | 1.4M | 20,553 | 180 |
| Christmas in July | 1.9M | 148K | 14,398 | 88 |
| Happier Hours | 5.2M | 23K | 18,348 | 39 — bought reach |
| Works Burger | 9.6M | 10K | 25,431 | 31 — bought reach |
By post type
Across 335 organicBy media pillar
BRAND / TASTE / VALUE / CUO| Tier · job to be done | Posts | Avg views | Trust signal | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macro · scroll-stop & awareness e.g. shepmates, russ.eats, tillyoddyblack | ~30 | 800K+ | 12.6% | Job done Drives 90% of campaign views |
| Mid-tier · engagement & habit e.g. issac_eatsalot, _lianadam, claudia b | ~80 | ~150K | Higher ER per view | Half job done Engagement yes. Habit unverified — saves data missing |
| UGC · trust & credibility Real customer content | 0 in scope | — | 10.2% trust | Orphaned No agency owns this. Highest trust signal in research |
Liquid Gold — anatomy of the headline
Take the two outlier posts away — one creator, one organic — and the campaign averages 297K per post. Ordinary. The headline is real, but the system delivering it isn't yet repeatable. The scoreboard rewarded the spike. The architecture didn't build it.
kfc.com.au is invisible to AI
The site is JavaScript-only. AI crawlers see "You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." Every bot answer about KFC deals, menu, and offers is being constructed from third-party sources, not from KFC.
Aggregator sites own the brand voice
OzBargain, kfcmenuaustralia.com, kfcmenuprice.au, CupoNation, Buckscoop and Picodi rank above KFC for "deals this week" and "what's new". None of these are owned or controlled by KFC.
Liquid Gold is missing from AI search
The 6.4M-creator-view campaign doesn't surface in AI answers about "what's new at KFC" or "best fast food chicken Australia". Tower Burger, Stranger Things and 30 Nuggets do — through aggregators, not KFC's own properties.
Category lists exclude KFC
"Best fried chicken in Australia" surfaces Gami, independents, regional brands. KFC appears in business-context articles (store count, market share) — not in cravings or recommendations.
30 Nuggets earned its way in
One organic moment ("30 Nuggets for $10") is being independently described by aggregators as "arguably one of the best fast food deals in Australia". Earned, durable, AI-visible — without paid lift.
AI visibility scorecard
The orphan stages
UGC, AI search visibility, app commerce content all sit outside current agency scope. Highest-trust signal in the audience. Lowest investment.
The overlap stages
Brand creative, paid amplification, creator content all have multiple agencies producing in parallel. Same brief lands in 2-3 places, comes out 2-3 times.
The measurement gap
Three measurement systems running in parallel — none of them looking at the same view. Future state needs one shared layer the whole village reads from.
Where does the paid mix go from 99% awareness to a balanced funnel?
Sales / app conversion / retargeting are under-invested. What's the right split for a 2026 system that earns trips, not just views?
What's the role of macro vs mid-tier vs UGC in 2026?
Macro keeps doing scale. Mid-tier earns engagement. UGC is the unclaimed trust channel. Decide: who owns it, how it scales, what the brief looks like.
Which formats earn their place inside the 800?
Recurring formats (Wicked Wed) are under-scaled despite stated audience demand. One-off campaigns (Sweet Tokyo, Christmas in July) are over-scaled vs resonance. Which formats compound?
How fast do we move on AI search visibility?
1 in 4 of the audience already uses AI to decide what to eat. KFC's site is invisible to AI. 30/60/90-day fix. Who owns it.
What does one shared measurement view look like?
Three agencies, three measurement systems, no shared dashboard. The decision-led metric set, by journey stage, agreed and reported the same way every period.