Success is when your creative stops needing you

Truth of the matter is, there aren't enough strategists to take on every brief. Whether we like it or not, at some point, we gotta empower our teammates to work without us without sacrificing the effectiveness of the campaigns.

First of which would be our dear creatives because, another truth of the matter is, strategy is useless if our creative teams can't make great work out of it. This is not an easy pill to swallow. It takes a lot of maturity and security in the belief that our work as strategists matters. Tbh, I wouldn't be able to fully buy into this idea if I didn't experience it first-hand.

THE PROBLEM:
how might we help KFC win in the only country where it happens to be an underdog?

In the Philippines, Jollibee was king. KFC was #4 after Jollibee, McDo, Mang Inasal (see: unli rice). At this time, I had recently been promoted as Senior Planner, now fully responsible for the growth of my brands so the pressure was real.

OUR SOLUTION:
After almost a full year of insighting, and working closely with KFC's regional CMO, we've created KFC PH's brand world. In layman's terms, KFC's reason-for-being in the Philippines and how it will look, sound, and behave across different points of engagement.

RESULTS:
Because the brand world was created in collab with my Creative Lead, she knew it inside and out so much so that she'd come up to me with ideas over sangria way ahead of client brief and during cultural moments. She knew the strategy and took ownership of it so she knew how to use it to sell braver work to our clients.

From disrupting the cheesiness of Valentine campaign ads to scaring the world with Bloody Gravy, brand strategy done well sets the stage for creative autonomy within the confines of building one brand. It was heartwarming to see my creative teams feeling empowered and churning out effective work with little strategy supervision which allowed me to spend more time growing the Agency's business.

BONUS: many of us were promoted from this team (accounts, strategy, creatives, project management).