Source: Creativity
Question: how do you engage screen-obsessed millennial staff with your product, and at the same time announce a quirky marketing stunt that shows you’re still one step ahead of your competitors? KFC is attempting to do both with the creation of a virtual reality “Escape Room” that teaches its employees how to fry chicken to its Original Recipe.
“The Hard Way — a KFC Virtual Training Escape Room,” was developed by Wieden & Kennedy Portland’s creative technology group, W&K Lodge, and is designed to be experienced via the Oculus platform. Promoted with a horror-film style video, seen here, it challenges employees to master five steps — inspecting, rinsing, breading, racking and pressure-frying the chicken. That’s all while confronted with a creepy talking picture of Colonel Sanders, who is “haunting” the room. Only when they’ve successfully mastered the techniques the employee can “escape” back into the real world.
Jonathan Minori, W&K Lodge design director, explains in a statement: “What excites us is experimenting with new tools and mediums to tell stories. VR became an obvious choice to create an immersive experience that teaches trainees how to make KFC’s Original Recipe. The escape room concept builds on the pure training and utility of the experience into something that’s also entertaining and connected to KFC’s iconic founder.”
