The wolf at the door of the global elite

In a competitive Asian creative landscape, Wolf BKK has climbed Campaign Brief Asia’s Creative Rankings and emerged as one of the region’s most compelling agencies of 2025. At the centre of its recent run was “Uncle KFC’s Rice Bowl”, a five-minute film that reinterpreted Colonel Sanders through a distinctly Thai cultural lens.

Rather than aligning with KFC’s global evolution of the brand icon, Wolf recast him as a warm, familiar “uncle,” tapping into everyday Thai behaviour and repositioning fried chicken as a daily staple. The campaign went on to win two Gold Pencils at the 2025 AWARD Awards and demonstrated how culturally grounded storytelling can resonate far beyond its home market.

We spoke with Torsak Chuenprapar, Co-Founder and CCO of Wolf BKK, about long-form craft, client trust and the broader impact of regional recognition.

At last year’s AWARD Awards, you won Gold in the 5-30 minute Fiction Film category. In an age of 6-second unskippable ads, how did you convince the client – and the audience- to stay for five minutes?
At Wolf, I often remind the team that advertising interrupts people’s leisure time. Very few people choose to watch ads while they are working, unless they work in advertising themselves. So if we are going to intrude on someone’s downtime, we have a responsibility to give something back in return.

At the very least, it should entertain.

It should offer something new.

It should leave the audience with something of value.

That’s why we tend not to focus too much on how many seconds a piece of work runs for. We care more about whether it earns the time it asks for.

And what we’ve found is that when you do that, people don’t just watch until the end, they come back to watch it again, and they share it with others. The resulting feeling towards the brand is very different from what a six-second unskippable ad can typically achieve.

Global icons usually come with a set of iron-clad brand guidelines. The Colonel is one of the most recognised figures on earth. How did you convince the KFC Masterbrand to let you ‘Thai-ify’ him into ‘Uncle KFC’? Was there a moment of friction where you had to fight for that cultural nuance, or did they immediately see the potential?
I have to say that the KFC client was incredibly brave from the very beginning. They briefed us with a very clear challenge: to create something that would make them feel “uncomfortable.” And that was a very exciting place to start.

However, when we presented the work for the first time, while they liked the idea, they also felt that it went beyond their intended threshold of discomfort to a point where it might even put their jobs at risk. So, naturally, some adjustments were made before we moved into production.

You have to understand that globally, Colonel Sanders has recently been rebranded to appear younger, cooler, more aspirational, even more muscular. But what we were proposing was a return to the version many of us grew up with: a warm, familiar “uncle-like” figure.

For us at Wolf, this was culturally important for the Thai market.

Thai audiences connect more with warmth, familiarity, and approachability – not the cool stuff.

Even after the shoot, the client felt uneasy again. And this time it was on us to step in and reassure them that this was the right direction.

We ended up conducting a focus group for the client. Fortunately, the results were positive, and that gave everyone the confidence to move forward and ultimately bring the work to life in the way you see today.

I truly have to credit the KFC client for their trust and courage throughout the entire process.

When work is recognised at a regional benchmark like AWARD, what does that actually signal — to clients, competitors, and the wider market?
It’s widely recognised that AWARD is one of the most revered shows to win in Asia, and only a handful of Thai creatives have ever been awarded there.

For our clients, it reinforces their confidence in partnering with us, not just in terms of craft, but in the kind of bold, unconventional thinking that may feel unfamiliar at first.

Interestingly, we’ve also had several of KFC’s competitors reach out to Wolf after the win, asking whether we could help create similar work for their brands.

But beyond that, I believe recognition at a regional benchmark like AWARD sends a broader signal to the market. It encourages brands to be braver, to move beyond what feels safe or familiar, and to consider more ambitious storytelling formats.

In our case, it has opened up conversations around long-form content and whether audiences might be more willing to engage when the work offers genuine value in return for their time.

Ultimately, it helps shift the mindset from “how short can we make this?” to “how meaningful can we make this?”

Beyond the gold on the mantelpiece, what is the ‘ROI’ of a win for the agency’s internal culture?
In many ways, the biggest return is cultural.

It reinforces a mindset that we are not here to simply produce more work but to produce work that is worth making.

It reassures the team that the difficult conversations, the late nights, and the moments where we choose not to take the safer route are all in service of something meaningful.

And for a small team like ours, that belief is essential to sustaining both morale and ambition over time.

Why are AWARD awards a “must-enter” for Asian agencies?
The standard of judging is incredibly high, and that’s precisely why the recognition carries real weight not just creatively, but professionally across the region.

It’s also one of the shows that contributes significantly to Campaign Brief’s creative rankings, which are closely followed by both agencies and clients in our part of the world.

Entering AWARD is not just about chasing a trophy. It’s about benchmarking your work against some of the most rigorous creative standards in the region and understanding where you truly stand.

Be sure to check out the new and existing AWARD categories and get your submission in quickly. On time Entries close 5:00pm AEDT, Friday 13 March 2026. The extended deadline (15% late fee) closes on 17 April 2026. Download the entry kit here.