KFC has made gaming a pillar of its communications in China. But this year, KFC had to go beyond sponsorships to make itself an integral part of League of Legends, the world’s most popular esport.
Fans like game stats, but esports has so many numbers generated in real-time that fans just rely on intuition to predict outcomes.
No typical fan can do predictive calculations while watching simultaneous things happening in a game. One influencer attempted to make such predictions, but he proved to be so inaccurate that fans saw him as a joke.
Hence, KFC saw this as the biggest opportunity to address an unmet need and elevate the fan experience.
Enter Colonel KI – KFC’s AI algorithm.
KFC partnered with data company PentaQ to create an algorithm that generated real-time game predictions, which proved to be highly accurate that fans just went crazy, constantly checking predictions throughout each game.
This new capability was the only way for KFC to truly integrate into the experience, and the Colonel was the perfect persona to deliver this.
To celebrate, the Colonel distributed coupons to fans and invited them to order KFC.