Women do most of the meal planning in an American family. In KFC’s long history we have spent a lot of time fine tuning our advertising to talk to women in a way they will appreciate and through mediums they use. Soap operas, specifically General Hospital delivered stronger ratings against the female, older skewing audience we were trying to reach during the weekend of National Fried Chicken Day.

In KFC’s long history we have spent a lot of time fine tuning our advertising to talk to women in a way they will appreciate and through mediums they use. But we have never got them where they are the weakest, where they truly let their guard down, until now. For two weeks leading up to Colonel Sanders' guest appearance on General Hospital, Colonel Sanders was actively live tweeting from the KFC Twitter account during each episode of General Hospital, commenting on plotlines, love triangles and other soap opera drama. Until on July 6, Colonel Sanders himself made a special appearance as a guest star in a General Hospital episode.

Women do most of the meal planning in an American family. In KFC’s long history we have spent a lot of time fine tuning our advertising to talk to women in a way they will appreciate and through mediums they use. Soap operas, specifically General Hospital delivered stronger ratings against the female, older skewing audience we were trying to reach during the weekend of National Fried Chicken Day.

We wanted to lean heavily in to soap opera tropes and play in to the General Hospital universe by making Colonel Sanders have a pre-existing relationship with one of the show's stars, Maxie. We first positioned Colonel Sanders as a huge General Hospital fan by live tweeting each episode of General Hospital with his opinions of important plotlines and love triangles. This is how we peaked fans' interest until the episode aired featuring Colonel Sanders himself. KFC and ABC’s General Hospital partnered together to create a multiplatform partnership around the on-air integration of KFC’s iconic Colonel Sanders, played by George Hamilton, into a storyline on General Hospital. Half native product placement, half meta self-aware medium commentary, this idea sits firmly between paid eyeballs and earned media opportunity.

KFC and General Hospital saw strong results from the social posts in connection with the partnership. The first post on 7/3 featured talent from the show teasing a special guest star coming later that week. KFC gained 1,225 new Twitter Followers on 7/6 - 11x more new followers than their average daily fan growth for the year to date. 7/6 was the #4 most followed day on Twitter for KFC of 2018 to date. KFC was mentioned 43,486 times on Twitter on 7/6;+ 9.8x average daily conversation volume. 7/6 was KFC’s most talked about day of the year. The episode featuring Colonel Sanders also had a higher viewership than the prior week's average.