To help promote its boneless chicken, KFC recently launched a funny, clever campaign called #iatethebones. The campaign was launched to spur entries from KFC customers and fans of their best shocked “I ate the bones!” face or scenario. Winners are selected on a weekly basis and the best submissions will be used in an online series of ads promoting the chicken. Here’s why we love this campaign.
It spurs interesting, creative ad content.
The goal of this contest is for KFC’s marketing department to get great images and, possibly, video to incorporate into an online ad. Although they will be responsible for incorporating five different approaches into a cohesive ad (or campaign), they are taking some of the work off their hands by encouraging fans to give them great material to work with. It’s also a great way to highlight fans and show how much they mean to the KFC brand.
It spurs user-generated social content.
Even the participants who have submissions that don’t get chosen will get a certain amount of recognition, because KFC community managers will be able to use these submissions for content either immediately or later on. User-generated content always looks great and stands out on social media. As long as they have boneless chicken, KFC will have user content to help promote it.
It’s embracing multiple platforms (and reaching users across all of them).
Calling for images and videos across a number of platforms brings attention to the fact that KFC has presences on all of them. A person to follows the brand on Facebook may not be aware that they have a presence on Vine, and so on. Not only does this bring attention to these multiple accounts, it opens them up to a new audience across those platforms. It also encourages entries from people who might not enter otherwise; a Facebook user may not be on Twitter or Vine, but because they can submit via Facebook, they’d be more inclined to enter. More platforms = more entries = more content for KFC.
Inspired? Learn the ins and outs of user-generated content with our introductory guide.
