KFCopypaste

Background

There were 516,000 recipe videos on YouTube that promised to teach viewers how to cook chicken to Colonel Sanders’ original recipe.

The problem was that the Colonel’s original recipe was a closely guarded secret so all 516,000 videos would lead to a disappointing result.

Idea

KFC thought that they should at least reward their fans and copycats with authentic KFC chicken cooked to the KFC recipe.

At copypaste.kfc.es, people could exchange the amateur recipes for actual KFC chicken. A link converter transformed the YouTube URLs into authentic KFC products. When any one of the 516,000 links were copied and pasted into the converter, they were turned into a voucher which could be redeemed at any KFC restaurant. Each URL was redeemable for only a limited number of coupons but people could search the web for other, different versions of the recipe to claim their coupon.

Results

In two days, 25,000 redeemable codes were issued.

Our Thoughts

I’m not sure why but the concept of ‘brand response’ seems to have fallen out of fashion. This idea, though, is a classic of the genre. While it’s a straightforward promotion, behind it is a very strong brand message about KFC’s unique recipe mix of 11 herbs and spices. If over half a million people have taken the time and trouble to try cooking their own version, the original must be pretty darn good.

While the campaign succeeded in getting thousands more of people eating KFC, my bet is that brand tracking would have seen significant upwards movement too.