KFC: Zinger Launch | Wieden+Kennedy

We teamed with World View, a stratospheric exploration company, and MediaMonks, a digital production company that created a specially designed bucket craft to transport the Zinger where no sandwich had been before.

On the day the sandwich launched in store, we used PR and TV spots to announce our great space endeavor. The launch spot featured actor, and latest Colonel, Rob Lowe, channeling President John F. Kennedy's famous "We Choose to Go to the Moon" speech that announced the ambitious US space program.

Over the next several weeks, to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look as we prepared for the big space launch, we created a website to house all of our content and partnered with media outlet The Verge to document the process.

Finally, on June 29, we launched the Zinger into space, broadcasting the trip via livestream on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and in post-event highlight videos.

We even created a real meteorite shaped like a chicken sandwich for KFC Ltd., the brand’s e-commerce store which featured a collection of limited-edition fried chicken apparel and merchandise. The meteorite was listed for $20,000, and it took just a little over a week to find a buyer; they happened to be vegan, but lifelong fans of the brand.

During the week of the launch, our space mission website had nearly 400,000 visitors. In the end, the campaign became one of the biggest earned media moments of the year garnering 4 billion impressions with publishers like Space.com to The Atlantic to New York Times covering the mission.