How does KFC's Crazy Thursday continue to be so popular?

This article specifically analyzes the reasons why KFC's Crazy Thursday continues to be popular from three aspects: UGC content, long-term marketing methods, and communication assets. Its essence is to create a deeper connection between users and brands, maintain user assets, and provide a typical case for other brand marketing. It is recommended for people with brand marketing needs.

I originally thought that KFC's Crazy Thursday was an effective advertisement to promote its products, but I didn't expect that KFC would use short-term advertising to bring long-term effects and give the event long-term influence.

After years of hard work, KFC's Crazy Thursday has not been forgotten by consumers. Instead, its interesting content and jokes have made the event more and more popular. Every Thursday, users spontaneously participate in it, turning KFC's weekly promotions into brand assets with long-term value.

How popular is KFC Crazy Thursday? At present, the number of readings of the topic #KFC Crazy Thursday# on Weibo has exceeded 2 billion, with nearly 4.2 million participants in the discussion, and the number of people who have created original content with the topic has exceeded 45,000. This data is still rising, which shows the popularity of UGC content.

KFC has built product promotion into an activity with long-term value, allowing users to participate spontaneously and triggering a weekly craze among young people to spread memes. How did KFC do it?

1. Controlling UGC content is the key to generating communication fission

The marketing logic of promotional activities is essentially user logic. KFC’s weekly memes can achieve large traffic volumes at a low cost. The key lies in how to get users to spread the word spontaneously and generate marketing fission.

1. Fixed time nodes

There is never a shortage of brands that "create festivals" and "play with memes" in the marketing circle. The reason why events such as 301, 618, and Double 11 can attract nationwide attention is that their once-a-year scarcity and advertising drive are the key to expanding their influence.

Amid the popularity of year-end promotions and festival promotions, KFC has taken a different approach and chosen to offer discount promotions every Thursday. On the one hand, this is to differentiate itself from Black Friday, and on the other hand, office workers have already worked for three days, so this provides users with a week of relaxation.

In this way, every Thursday becomes a day for consumers to release stress and emotions during working hours. Young people can satisfy their inner emotional expectations by playing memes. As the number of participants increases, the popularity of KFC's weekly promotions is invisibly increased.

2. Content participation, extensibility, and virality

In addition to the fixed time nodes, what is more important is the obvious characteristics presented in the content itself during the KFC Crazy Thursday event.

The phenomenon of UGC content dissemination can be said to be that a large number of users participate in the creation, focusing on creativity and dissemination, and with the increase in the number of participating users, the topic ferments, enhancing the influence of the event and the life cycle of dissemination. How does KFC's Thursday event stimulate user participation?

3. Abandon the crude and straightforward advertising model and stimulate positive emotions

The reason why KFC's promotional activities can be widely spread is that the brand abandoned the crude and straightforward advertising model and adopted a more interesting and informative way to attract the public's attention. The novel advertising method has become a magic weapon for the brand to harvest users' attention and generate traffic dividends.

Emotional release is the core of extending the life of advertising. Let's look at KFC's Crazy Thursday. Its content has a low participation threshold and is full of jokes. It can express people's various emotions, allowing young people to immediately think of this "decompression time point" created by KFC when they encounter anxiety in life and work. They can vent their emotions through words or eating. Coupled with the drive of herd mentality, every Thursday has become a fixed day for users to release their emotions when they are at work. The traction of emotions has generated the continuous attention of users and also provided a driving force for the natural extension of the life of advertising.

They want to watch, want to continue watching, and want to dig deeper into the content behind it. At the same time, the brand provides users with time and space to create, so that users can release their emotions and give full play to their strengths. As the content created by users increases, there are always some contents that can get the pain points or excitement points of users, making KFC Crazy Thursday arouse the curiosity of more people, and the interesting content also makes people want to see and want to continue watching.

This kind of content, which combines fun, interesting, reversal and other entertainment elements, can mobilize users' willingness to actively spread it, and also make the brand PGC content more contagious.

Through high-quality content, more social scenarios are derived. In the KFC Crazy Thursday event, the core of its marketing is to have interesting content and attention. The brand also provides users with invisible companionship with high-quality content, giving birth to more social scenarios.

Stories such as frustrating workplaces, failed emotions, and successful games have driven the further development of content, leading to viral spread. In addition, highly ritualistic interactions have prompted the public to continue to pay attention and participate, forming a complete closed loop of communication, which has subtly extended the life cycle of communication and gradually established irreplaceable brand assets.

It is not difficult to find that the reason why KFC's Crazy Thursday has lasted for more than 4 years is inseparable from the brand's occupation of the user's mind. In the era of stock game, the competition between brands has become a competition of minds. For example, it is difficult for users to tell which one of Wanglaoji, Jiaduobao, and Heqizheng tastes better, but when faced with the herbal tea products on the shelves, they will naturally take their favorite brand.

2. Abandon traditional marketing methods and transform promotional activities into long-term marketing

More often than not, brand promotions are more like one-time deals, primarily intended to sell goods.

However, KFC has abandoned the logic of traditional promotional activities and transformed promotional activities into long-term marketing opportunities for the brand through continuous marketing at fixed marketing nodes. It has captured people's attention through content such as jokes, humor, and reversals. In addition, the brand marketing's guidance on various aspects such as sense of ritual and content direction has driven users' curiosity and sense of freshness, making consumers willing to share their creations on social platforms, forming the Crazy Four Literature phenomenon.

In addition, the multiple influences of consumer entertainment, curiosity, and herd mentality have attracted more people to participate in KFC's subculture brand activities. In addition, the continuous output of content at fixed nodes has also made the public develop a habit of periodic attention. Obviously, KFC has turned promotional activities into an empathy advancement where users play together and release emotions.

In order to build momentum for the event, KFC even chose to launch the "Annual Crazy Thursday Celebration" at the end of the year, and summarized popular words in the event, such as V me 50, who's treating me, why rich girls always eat KFC on Crazy Thursday, etc., to form consumers' overall impression of KFC Crazy Thursday.

Turning promotional activities into long-term marketing has driven the differentiation and innovation of KFC's Crazy Thursday marketing. Throughout the entire marketing activity, the brand did not do too much guidance, but through weekly discount promotions, and occasional interactions with those wonderful Crazy Thursday literary users, it presented users with multiple elements of content such as healing, humor, and happiness, which stimulated users' associations with brand consumption scenarios, made the communication of brand information more natural and smooth, realized the empowerment of the brand by the activity, and made people associate the brand value of "KFC has discounts on Thursdays".

3. De-branding and building brand communication assets

In addition, KFC's Crazy Thursday event has a wide enough impact and lasts long enough, which invisibly builds a bridge between products and users and improves marketing efficiency. These effects are inseparable from the establishment of brand assets.

With the accumulation of content, users, activity popularity and other factors, "Crazy Thursday Literature" and "Crazy Thursday" have developed the characteristics of de-branding, that is, the brand has become a secondary role in communication, creating the impression that activity = brand, while consumers have evolved into the center of communication and continue to influence the width, depth and breadth of brand activities.

Judging from many cases such as Double 11 and 618, de-branding seems to be the latest trend in the successful evolution of brands and activities, and it is one of the ways to verify the results of brand marketing. Brands continue to provide users with a seamless experience through unique marketing and product experience, allowing their sales to always maintain a growth trend. Coupled with factors such as group user autonomous dissemination, it has successfully consolidated user memory, achieved mind occupation, and transformed weekly promotions into the brand's core communication assets.

4. Final Thoughts

KFC's Crazy Thursday effectively describes and expresses the product through high-quality content in appropriate scenarios. It seems that the brand has turned Thursday into a fixed time point for users to get bargains, but in fact it has created a deeper connection between users and the brand, increased the width and breadth of the event, invisibly improved the brand's influence and affinity, and achieved the goal of maintaining user assets.

Author: Mr. Bingfa

Source: WeChat public account "Marketing Art of War (ID: lanhaiyingxiao)"