Chicken Licken Busts a Move to Unleash the ‘SoulSister’ in All of Us with Joe Public

A dictionary might tell you that a ‘sister’ is a girl/woman who has parents in common with someone else, or it might refer to a female friend/peer. But Chicken Licken has chosen to defy the dictionary’s conventions, as it does with so many others, through its new SoulSister campaign, saying ‘There’s a SoulSister in all of us’. (Yes, even in you, SoulMister.)

Airing for the first time on 12 September on screens big and small across the country, the SoulSister campaign launches with a film set to the soul-rocking Bomba Estéreo track, ‘So Yo’, and shows the SoulSister ‘effect’ involuntarily taking over South Africa, one (wildly out of control, gyrating, soul-shaken) body at a time.

Created in partnership with Joe Public and directed by Slim of Darling Films, our story starts on a train with a suit-clad businessman, whose inner SoulSister has just come out to play ‘during the people’ as Tweeps might say. A tell-tale orange packet lands in the lap of an unsuspecting co-passenger who is perplexed by this sudden display of wild abandon as the man exits the train – his face and limbs seemingly working to a different agenda to what his diary might suggest for the day. As we travel through the city, we encounter more and more joyfully out-of-control bodies as this SoulSister effect takes hold of every person who has enjoyed the meal.

This bold new SoulSister campaign is the result of a deliberate move to reposition the sub-brand by making it much more inclusive. This signifies a strategic departure from the previous positioning which was much more female-target focused, with the 2019 campaign featuring three ‘SoulSisters’ who show up to champion other women in tough situations, and even to cheer on a young man having difficulty ‘coming out of the closet’ with his dad. 

Says Assaf Levy, executive creative director at Joe Public: “We needed to overcome the inherent bias implied in the name ‘SoulSister’. We couldn’t change the product name, so we chose to redefine what ‘SoulSister’ means extrinsically. It took on the meaning of that inner self that we all have, the part of us longing to let loose, to move, to play, and to be free of the constraints of the everyday. The version of ourselves that we don’t even know exists until we suddenly meet it. The part that longs to be fed.”

Xolisa Dyeshana, Joe Public’s chief creative officer agrees: “We chose dance as a vehicle to represent each person’s unique SoulSister personality because it’s highly individualistic and self-expressive. The campaign gives men, women, children, EVERYONE – regardless of who they are or where they’re from – permission ­to embrace that part of themselves. It’s another example of how Chicken Licken loves to break down stereotypes through light-hearted entertainment, using creativity to grow both brand and country beyond, by allowing them to see themselves differently and break out of the norms that society tries to impose on us.”

The campaign is set to unfold in coming weeks on social media. And according to Tlhogi Swaratlhe, Ovayo Ntlabati and Joey Gordon, the young Joe Public creative team responsible for the SoulSister concept, there’s an extra surprise to come for Chicken Licken fans on TikTok – because if there’s anywhere a person’s SoulSister wants to show off their stuff, it’s on TikTok, right?