KFC joined the Facebook live video trend with their latest marketing stunt. Their unique and rather bizarre video featured live footage of cats crawling over a six-foot Colonel Sanders cat climber, attracting a vast audience of viewers on Facebook.
Narrated by Ron Lynch (Ron of Bob’s Burgers), the footage included dangling chicken, shooting lasers, toys and distractions to keep the pack of cats occupied.
The description under a video shared by KFC on its YouTube, in which it cut together the highlights of the event, told a white lie: ‘This is NOT a shameless attempt to sell fried chicken by wooing the internet with cute kittens.’
KFC also underlaid the activity with some social good, urging viewers to adopt a cat from the Heaven on Earth Society of Animals shelter, based in LA.
What are the marketing takeaways? KFC combined best practices with creativity. It’s a known fact that live video on Facebook is the way to go right now and cat videos are viral material. KFC combined those elements with humor and out-of-the-box thinking to create some magic online. They brought in user engagement to draw more viewers, capitalizing on the social nature of social media.
Viewers could interact with the live stream in various ways every few minutes: comment with name suggestions, share to activate cat facts or use emoji reactions to vote on what should happen next — on World Emoji Day, nonetheless…
To spur some sharing and lure more eyes to the branded video, folks were encouraged to share the link to Facebook friends. The video’s bio said that every time someone shared the video, they’d add a kitten to the room. However, the video generated 5,200 shares, and no more than about a dozen cats ever appeared, sparking some frustration among viewers in the comments section.
To drum up additional participation, KFC encouraged viewers to submit cat drawings on the microsite kitten.superdeluxe.com. Entrants submitted their drawings along with their name and email address, which KFC could potentially leverage for future marketing purposes.
We say kudos on a job well done, KFC!