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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Dougherty - North America

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The Oprah Effect on Free Chicken

May 08, 2009

Everyone loves a freebie and when a coupon for the new grilled chicken at Kentucky Fried Chicken was posted on Oprah.com, the impact was immediate. The volume of visits to Oprah.com increased 46x on Tuesday, May 5th as compared to the previous day and increased another 36% on Wednesday, May 6th. The promotion was very successful at driving visits to KFC’s Unthink website, which is promoting the new grilled chicken offering. The visits to unthinkfc.com jumped 178% on May 6th as compared to the previous day. On Wednesday, 79% of the traffic to Oprah.com visited unthinkfc.com immediately after.

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The promotion was certainly successful at driving visits and coupon downloads, but has also sparked insanely long lines as KFC struggles to meet demand. The company has announced offering rain checks to customers that have been unable to redeem the coupon amid the frenzy.

Posted by Heather Dougherty at 10:39 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Coupons | Oprah | Viral Marketing