KFC Australia hid overseas menu items in its app to drive sales

During Australia's cost-of-living squeeze, food aggregators were pulling customers away from KFC's own app. A normal response would have been coupons; KFC needed app downloads and repeat transactions without joining the discount race.

Kentucky Fly secretly dropped foreign KFC products into the app, starting with Japan's Wafu Cutlet Burger. Customers who found an item could order it only for pickup in its home country, and winners were flown there while the trip became fast-turnaround content for the next drop.

The One Show entry says the four-week campaign produced a 43% uplift in new app users, 1.84 million app transactions, and $40 million in app sales. WARC separately summarized a 27% digital revenue increase and US$5.4 million in incremental revenue.

Make app discovery the prize entry

It used KFC's global menu as scarce inventory, not just content.

It made customers search the app repeatedly because the next drop could be real.

It replaced price pressure with travel fantasy while still measuring app sales.

When discounting is crowded, make the product hunt itself valuable enough that customers return voluntarily.

The campaign won a 2025 One Show Bronze Pencil in Experiential & Immersive Commerce and was later written up by WARC as a Cannes Creative Lions case study.