Young creatives witness huge success with KFC South Africa’s latest Mother’s Day advert

JOHANNESBURG – 12 May, 2021 – Three young South African creatives, from film production house Senses, recently won the pitch for KFC South Africa Mother’s Day advert through Filmer.tv. This has given these young, budding creatives a platform to showcase their talent and work with a brand that small production houses, traditionally, would not easily access. What’s more, since its launch on Saturday morning, 08 May 2021, the advert has witnessed over 1.1 million views and over 3 million impressions across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Says Mo Matli, Director, Cinematographer and Editor at Senses: “Our vision is to be at the forefront of showcasing South Africa from a relatable, graceful, and heartwarming perspective and this advert offered us the perfect opportunity to do just this. The ad set out to celebrate South Africa’s diverse culture of multiple mother figures – from grannies to sisters and even the lady down the road that you buy your lunch from.”

“We've enjoyed the journey, and seeing our vision come to life as beautifully as it has. The reception it has received has been overwhelming.”

This film was based on the cultural collective that South Africans have many mother figures in their lives and the narrative was developed around a young man living in the city, far from his own mother yet takes the time to show appreciation to the women who support him and ‘always choose him’, by gifting them something special - a KFC bucket!

“Having been in SA for 50 years, we have always aimed to truly drive the spirit of youth development at many levels – be it on the cricket field, through our Add Hope programme, or even internally through our bursary programme for our team member’s children,” says Suhayl Limbada, Marketing Director at KFC South Africa.

“And so, we are extremely excited about this additional avenue to our marketing approach and efforts. This advert has not only performed extremely well and hit home for South African audiences, more importantly, it has given this amazing group of young, talented, energetic young South African creatives an opportunity to shine with a global brand.”

Senses is a South African content creation team made up of copywriter, Mandla Phakathi, voice over artist and soon-to-be director, Bonko Khoza and Mo Matli who - after meeting a few years ago through a learnership programme – started collaborating on different passion projects and decided to come together to launch their own short films. The first one created in 2020 titled “To whom it may concern” is a tale of an aspiring fitness trainer in search of a fitness bursary. The team work strongly together to share ideas, collectively decide on insight to work from and work hard at bringing the story to life.

“Coming from a long career in the advertising and film industry, exposed to the wealth of filmmaking talent across South Africa, we knew that only a small percentage of this talent is landing on the radars of big brands. This model was outdated and with so much talent out there we felt our industry needed access to a community of creators who understand the tastes, nuances, and styles of the audience that brands want to speak to. This campaign brought this to life and was truly a rewarding experience to see a young filmmaking team, who never would have had the chance to land on KFC’s radar before, win the job and execute a film that the public are responding so well to,” says Peri vp, Chief Creative at Filmer.tv.

“Filmer.tv and KFC South Africa have both been highly supportive throughout the project. It's been a learning curve that's stretched our creativity and our ability to independently execute brand briefs and we are truly excited at the journey that this has set us on,” says Matli.

Concludes Limbada: “This is just the start of the type of content we will be creating, and the impact we are hoping to make in young entrepreneurs’ lives, so watch this space…”

To view the full advert click here.
For behind the scenes footage click here.

About KFC

KFC has been in South Africa for 50 years and has around 960 restaurants across the country. The first KFC restaurant to open in South Africa was in 1971 in Orange Grove, Johannesburg. KFC’s Original Recipe® Chicken was first made by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1940 when he perfected his secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices at his restaurant in Kentucky. Today, KFC is the world's most popular chicken restaurant, still preparing our chicken with the Colonel’s secret recipe to his exact standards. Every KFC restaurant follows the same global processes and procedures to make sure that our customers get great tasting food, every time.

About Filmer.tv

Filmer is Africa’s first crowdsource video content creation platform that enables brands, clients, and agencies to connect directly with an entire community of filmmakers, production companies, animators and video editors. The innovative Filmer platform allows a client to simply upload their brief for any type of video or stills content and have a community of creators’ pitch on it. Clients can then award the job and see it produced!