KFC's Absurd Game Show Urges Fans: 'Don't Crack!'

It's like the brand's cray commercials, but gamified

Can a KFC game show generate a cult following?

We’ll soon find out, now that the fast-feeder—which explores cultish themes in weird (and oft-controversial) U.K. and Ireland ads—has unveiled “Don’t Crack” on YouTube.

The Sept. 30 launch stems from KFC’s spring campaign inviting fans to prove how much they “Believe in Chicken.” Thirty contestants were chosen based on their responses. The hopefuls ranged in age from 22 to 65 and included a self-proclaimed witch, a police sergeant and a martial arts pro. They battled on the 30-minute “Don’t Crack” program for a grand prize of £50,000.

This trailer offers a deep-fried, saucy taste of the competition:

And for true believers, here’s the whole extra-crispy show:

Play

Challenges include a blindfolded hunt among obstacles and traps for 10 golden eggs and a laser handset clash. Ultimately, two finalists sit in nests; the first to shed tears of joy for KFC gets crowned champion. (It couldn’t end any other way!)

“After two years of telling people to ‘Believe in Chicken,’ we thought, What if we asked them, ‘How much do you believe in chicken?’ Once we had that question, it felt like we couldn’t just ask people. We had to give them a way to prove it. That eventually became ‘Don’t Crack,'” Mother London ECD Derek Man Lui tells Muse.

Jessie Swanson, who has served as a producer on Celebrity Juice and Destination X, helped develop the program. Iconoclast’s Pablo Rochat directed. YouTuber AJ Shabeel served as host.

“Younger audiences are incredibly good at avoiding advertising. But that doesn’t mean they won’t spend time with brands. If you make something genuinely entertaining, put it on the channels they actually watch and involve something they already care about, they’ll give you their time,” Lui says. “This felt like a format that could do that.”

The team studied various challenge shows for inspo and intensively planned “Don’t Crack” for two months. “But once the cameras rolled, we had to let go,” he says. “These were real people competing for real money. So we couldn’t predict who would win, who would crack or what chaos would unfold. With an ad, you generally know how it ends. Here, we built the sandbox and let the contestants take over.”

KFC and Mother view the project as a key component of the “fan universe” that grew from traditional ads into something more.

“Our audience are ‘Believers,’ people who don’t just love KFC, but actively want to be part of its world,” Liu says. “They’re not just watching the campaign anymore. They are the campaign.”

As for long-term goals, “‘Chicken lovers for life’ sounds pretty good to us. KFC is already an icon. Our job is to keep it culturally alive, surprising people and finding new ways to make ‘Believe in Chicken’ bigger than advertising.”

Related: Here’s a Tender Tune From KFC