Chicken Licken’s Rock My Soul shows SA flames

Introducing Feel the Fire: HeadQuarters – an explosive new tribute to Chicken Licken’s hottest menu item, Rock My Soul®.
The insight? When biting into a spicy-hot piece of Rock My Soul, heat-receptors send an SOS to the brain, which triggers a chain of bodily responses. First, the heartrate rises. Then, as the sensations of heat intensify, the sweat and tears production escalates. Lastly, a heady mix of dopamine and endorphins is pumped through the body, which leaves you craving the next bite.

Enter the new campaign, launched with a whacky, edge-of-your-seat film spectacle, directed by Tristan Holmes of Star Films. In it, the brain of a Rock My Soul eater is reimagined as a crazy brick-and-mortar world – a.k.a. HeadQuarters – where all manner of mayhem is unleashed after the arrival of a mysterious orange briefcase.

HeadQuarters is the latest Feel the Fire campaign, cementing both Rock My Soul’s positioning, and its reputation for delivering the ultimate SoulFire kick. "And with every campaign comes a fresh opportunity to push the boundaries of what Feel the Fire means," says Martin Schlumpf, executive creative director at Joe Public. "But what’s interesting is that this also comes at a time when our industry is figuring out which boundaries to push, or impose, in the use of AI."

Adds Xolisa Dyeshana, group CCO, "We’ve seen the backlash when people feel tricked by AI. So, maintaining Chicken Licken’s tradition of humorous storytelling with relatable, authentic characters, was crucial. Yet, we were excited by the chance to expand the fantastical environments those characters could play in. Ones that budget would not allow, because they’d involve intensive CG. But because fans would expect that (spoiler alert) e.g. streams of lava feeding a blast furnace, would be VFX anyway, we pushed those boundaries to give fans a more expansive experience, augmented by AI. Tristan is a maverick when it comes to using these tool with the high levels of sensitivity and integrity we needed to preserve the authenticity of the piece, and the result is arguably Chicken’s Licken’s most epic production yet."

What’s in store for the rest of the campaign, then? A multimedia feast for the senses, we’re told – including radio spots that take listeners from 0–60 with more emotional twists that a Stephen King novel (if only his tales ended as wildly happy). Says Kelly Bardon, business unit director at Joe Public, "Fans will meet the CEO of Soul up close, and get answers to burning questions about the strange sensations they experience when they Feel the Fire, all while content creators attempt to tame the Rock My Soul flames in their feeds."

And, word is, fans can also expect a highly flammable treasure hunt for those who yearn to Feel the Fire. So, the directive is clear. Get a Rock My Soul, take a bite and await emergency instructions... HEADQUARTERS: FEEL THE FIRE.