When a new restaurant opens in a commercial area that nobody can easily describe, the standard solution is a map. KFC and PS21 Madrid found a different solution when their new Mallorca location opened in July 2021 in the Polígono de Son Malferit industrial zone, a stretch of commercial space that had no particularly memorable name but one very recognisable anchor tenant: IKEA. Everyone in Mallorca knew where IKEA was. Nobody needed to know the Polígono de Son Malferit by name. KFC decided to use that.
The Billboard
PS21 designed a single outdoor execution placed on the road from Palma de Mallorca to Manacor, one of the island’s most travelled routes. The billboard combined KFC’s initials with IKEA’s immediately recognisable typographic identity: the brand’s characteristic blue and yellow colour scheme, the specific weight and style of its lettering, applied to a message that read as a clear directional indicator to anyone who had ever driven past an IKEA store.
The execution borrowed IKEA’s visual language rather than its name, making the reference legible without requiring any formal permission or partnership. The design decision is both the creative concept and the navigation tool: the person reading the billboard understands immediately that the KFC they are looking for is in the same commercial zone as the IKEA they already know how to get to.
The message was completed by KFC’s existing campaign platform in Spain. The #PolloPollo claim, which KFC had been running for years in the Spanish market, translates the Spanish linguistic habit of repeating a word to emphasise its quality into a brand platform. In Spain, when something is very good, you say it twice. KFC had been saying chicken twice. The billboard said it in IKEA’s colours.
IKEA’s Response
KFC shared the billboard image on Twitter on July 29, 2021. IKEA’s Spanish social media team responded the same day, with a message that acknowledged the gesture and redirected it to their own product: “Thank you KFC for telling people where the #ChickenChicken is: on our HUVUDROLL meatballs.”
The response converted a one-brand outdoor campaign into a two-brand social media exchange in a single post. IKEA took the compliment, kept its own product at the centre of the reply, and added the #ChickenChicken hashtag in the same doubling format that KFC’s #PolloPollo was built on. The response required no prior coordination between the two brands, no formal partnership, and no additional spend. IKEA’s social team simply recognised a creative opportunity and took it.
The combined interaction reached more than one million impressions and generated over 6,000 engagements, extending the reach of a single billboard placement far beyond the road between Palma and Manacor.
The Insight Behind the Campaign
Beatriz Martinez, KFC Brand Manager, described the thinking behind the activation: “The opening of this new restaurant is an opportunity to get closer to the inhabitants of this region. That’s why we try to find local insights that allow us to be part of their everyday life.”
The local insight in this case is one of the most universally available navigation references in any city with a large commercial area: the landmark that everyone uses to explain where everything else is. “It’s near IKEA” is a direction that functions in every language and in every city where IKEA has a store, because IKEA’s stores are large enough, distinctive enough, and well-known enough to serve as reliable geographic anchors.
KFC did not invent that navigation behaviour. It acknowledged it, built a billboard around it, and gave IKEA an opportunity to respond in kind. The campaign works because it is true. The new KFC really was near IKEA. The billboard was the most honest and most entertaining way available to say so.
Campaign Name: You Know Where to Find Us
Agency Name: PS21, Madrid
Brand Name: KFC Spain
Location: Polígono de Son Malferit, Mallorca, Spain (OOH, social; July 2021)
