Val Kubizniak, global chief marketing officer of KFC is on a mission tomake KFC the most culturally relevant chicken brand on the planet.
“My vision is simple, but not small,” she says. “We’re 75 years old – which in brand years is somewhere between ‘legendary’ and ‘don’t pull a muscle.’ I don’t see that legacy as something to protect under glass. I see it as permission to be bold. If you’ve been invited to dinner tables for 75 years, you’ve earned the right to rearrange the seating chart once in a while.”
Kubizniak joined Yum! Brands (KFC’s parent company) in 2007 and has held several roles across the brand around the world, including working as general manager and chief marketing officer for KFC Asia, where she grew the brand’s cultural relevance and drove growth in the region.
“With more than 33,000 restaurants worldwide, we don’t just have scale – we have 33,000 cultural touchpoints,” says Kubizniak. “My job is to ensure that KFC feels unmistakably global while remaining authentically local. The menu in Canada might differ from Thailand, but the feeling when you walk in should be unmistakably KFC.”
“At our core, we bring people together over great-tasting chicken,” she continues. “But how we do that must constantly evolve. Relevance is rented daily. We earn our place in culture market by market, idea by idea.”
Prior to Yum!, Val held marketing roles at Unilever, Campbell Arnott’s and Mars Inc. in Ireland and Australia. Brand Innovators caught up with Kubizniak ahead of SXSW – where she will be speaking at the Brand Innovators Leadership in Brand Marketing Summit at SXSW Lambert’s – to discuss the company’s legacy, showing up in culture and avoiding being boring. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is your mission and how does this show up in your creative?
Our mission is to banish the bland and dial up the finger lickin’. And that’s not just about delivering craveable chicken – it’s about creativity. We operate from a simple belief: we don’t own our brand. Consumers do. So instead of asking, “How do we get people to talk about KFC?” we ask, “How do we give them something worth talking about?”
That mindset led to campaigns like “Let There Be Cake” in Thailand. For our 40th anniversary, we built the “Cakeverse,” a surreal world where everything turns into cake – because when people love something, they always want more… until maybe they don’t. It was playful, culturally textured, and rooted in a real consumer truth.
The result? A long-form film that people actually chose to watch in an era where attention spans are allegedly shorter than a TikTok scroll. It sparked conversation and drove sales through a limited-time celebratory meal.
Before any creative goes live, we ask one question: “Would someone send this to a friend?” If the answer is no, it doesn’t ship.
How are you showing up in culture?
We show up as ourselves – confidently – in spaces where culture already exists. Take Gen Z. They’re shaping culture, and they’re incredibly brand-savvy. They don’t want brands to cosplay as them. They want brands with a point of view. So we focus on clarity over trend-chasing. Whether it’s gaming, social, or experiential partnerships like our Squid Game activation, we express our brand DNA in contemporary ways while staying unmistakably KFC. We don’t chase every meme. We choose moments where our voice actually belongs.
Culture is also hyperlocal. Some of our best ideas don’t start at global – they start with a 28-year-old brand manager who understands their market better than I ever could. Last year, a campaign that began as a small local test scaled to more than 40 countries because someone had the humility to say, “That’s brilliant. How do we adapt it?”
The best global brands are powered by local genius.
Where do you see the most opportunities for menu innovation to break through in a crowded category?
The biggest opportunity isn’t just inventing new products – it’s reimagining how people experience what we already do exceptionally well.
Take sauces. For a brand built on “finger lickin’ good,” sauce is not an accessory –it’s an amplifier. We’ve been innovating aggressively in this space because pairing our incredible fried chicken with bold, craveable sauces unlocks a completely new level of experience.
Through our Dunked platform, we’re leaning into that ritual. Dunking isn’t just functional – it’s emotional. It’s interactive. It’s customizable. It gives consumers permission to play with flavor. Whether it’s smoky, spicy, sweet, or unexpected, sauces allow us to dial up intensity and give people control over their bite.
In a category where everyone is launching the next sandwich, we’re asking: how do we elevate the core? How do we make the original recipe feel new again? Dunked does exactly that. It turns a meal into a moment – and yes, into a gloriously messy, truly finger-licking experience.
Beyond sauces, we’re also seeing massive opportunity in beverages. Drinks have shifted from sidekick to spotlight. For younger consumers especially, beverages are social currency. They’re photographed, customized, and shared. They’re identity signals.
That’s why we launched KWENCH – our bold beverage platform featuring 11 freshly made drinks across Boba Refreshers, Krunch Shakes, Sparkling Lemonades, and Iced Coffees. It’s playful, colorful, and built for a generation that treats drinks as the main character.
We’re expanding KWENCH to 3,000 locations in 2026 across the UK, Australia, and Canada. The strategy is intentional: invite people in for the drinks, and let the chicken close the deal. If Dunked amplifies the bite, KWENCH expands the occasion. That’s how we think about innovation – not as adding noise, but as building layered, craveable experiences around what makes KFC iconic in the first place.
What marketing issues are keeping you up at night this year?
The biggest challenge on my mind is avoiding the “safe innovation” trap, that middle ground where legacy brands get trapped because they’re too scared to truly innovate, but also too worried about being irrelevant to stay completely static.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Your consumers will forgive you for bold moves that don’t land, but they’ll never forget if you’re boring. For instance, after Dua Lipa went viral for her pickle soda, we doubled down on tapping into the tangy trend and brought to life the brine of the pickle across our menu in Canada. We launched the Pickled Menu, a bold, craveable lineup which included a Pickle sandwich, fries, chips and even our own version of Dua Lipa’s favorite beverage – the pickle Pepsi. We were able to quickly captivate our consumers by showing up unexpectedly and full of dill-light that is authentic to KFC.
So, while risk is something you may think keeps me up at night, instead it’s avoiding the boring and constantly finding new ways to evolve and remain true to our purpose.
Can you talk about how your experience at other brands helps shape your current perspective?
My career journey has taught me how great marketing principles are universal. I’ve been with Yum! Brands for nearly 20 years and have held positions across brands and in different parts of the world. While tactics and consumer interests may have evolved over the past two decades, building brand love has always remained important.
Outside of my own experience, there are certain brands that continue to grab my attention that I like to keep a pulse on. I am fascinated by the brands that manage to disrupt a well-established category. We see challengers come in and either bring new innovations or new experiences to consumers, flipping the category on its head. Take a challenger brand with a death-metal vibe who entered the water category that has been historically nature-esque and pristine. It took a page from a completely different playbook and entered a new category redefining what we think of when we think of water.
What are the big trends you are hearing that you think will resonate at SXSW this year?
There are three trends I anticipate will continue to drive forward at SXSW this year. The Power Shift: We’re fully in a consumer-in era. Brands no longer dictate culture – they participate in it. The smartest marketers are designing for co-creation, not control. Influence doesn’t come from volume anymore; it comes from relevance and resonance. The brands that win understand that attention isn’t owed – it’s earned, every single day.
AI and Personalization: AI is a transformative force in marketing. It enables more personalized consumer relationships and is changing how brands interact with audiences. Many brands are in experimentation mode, and some are rising while others fail. We’ll continue to see brands play with AI but instead of using it to cut corners, use it in a way to drive authenticity and personalizing with consumers – that is the sweet spot.
Creativity as a competitive advantage: In today’s world where our average attention spans are shrinking second by second, creativity will be more important than ever before to stand out and connect with next-generation consumers. The brands that break through won’t be the loudest – they’ll be the most interesting.
