Why Voxi embraced chicken shops to target Gen Z
The Media Plan
Over the summer, Vodafone’s Voxi brand decided to target its core consumer base of social media lovers through a unique focus on their love for… chicken shops.
As part of a broader campaign inclusive of OOH and social media activations, Voxi created 50,000 “Voxi Boxis” — branded cardboard fried chicken boxes — to be used at 51 chicken shops across the UK, including at branches of Morley’s Chicken Cottage and Chicken Valley.
Media was planned and bought by Dentsu agency Carat, while creative was by Omnicom agency Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO.
Phoebe Edwards, associate client director at Carat UK, told The Media Leader that the campaign was aimed at “authentically connect[ing] with diverse audiences” by “capturing the attention of all subcultures that define our fellow Gen Zers”.
Elevating OOH
Edwards described Carat’s mission as elevating media channels with optimal, contextually relevant formats, including through leveraging “bespoke creative” where possible.
The Voxi Boxi was thus devised as a way to help young phone users avoid greasing up their phones by allowing them to turn their chicken box into a phone stand.
“They can then watch as much as they want whilst eating their chicken, without having to worry about a grease-covered phone afterwards,” Edwards explained.
To target young audiences, the brand conducted research that suggested chicken shops were especially popular with 16-34s, with a huge majority of that target audience (87%) actively using their phones while waiting for food in chicken shops.
Edwards said unique OOH was used because of its salience with this demographic.
She continued: “We knew that, alongside digital channels, OOH was a proven powerful reach tool against the 16-34 audience, and with that we wanted to elevate our OOH and go beyond previous iterations. We knew that chicken shops gave us the reach we wanted and allowed us to resonate with Gen Z and live our brand truths in a new environment.”
‘Boredom opens the door to distractions’
Apart from the boxes themselves, Carat targeted digital screens within the chicken shops to create a “takeover effect”.
“Boredom opens the door to distractions, so we got creative by using their digital screens in 55 different chicken shops,” Edwards said.
This was helped in part by All City Media Solutions, which specialises in reaching untapped audiences via chicken shops.
The screens displayed Voxi’s brains-in-jars brand mascots, named Frank and Syd. Three 20-second social media films starring the pair were also released on various social platforms to further increase campaign reach among the target demographic.
Voxi plans to use econometrics solutions, as well ad-brand tracking, to measure the impact of the campaign on awareness and consideration of the brand.
“It will be interesting to evaluate whether this bespoke execution, combined with the dwell time of the environment, provides incremental impact on these metrics,” Edwards explained. “In addition, we measure delivered impressions against planned spend for digital screens, as well as organic social engagement and reshares from our posts.”