Social Media Monitoring Project Part1

Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) is the second largest multi-national restaurant in the world. Founded in 1930 by Harland Sanders in Louisville, Kentucky, it sells fast-food and fried chicken including high-calorie fast food like hamburgers, French fries, and soda. KFC is the world's most famous fast food chain, with more than 10,000 restaurants worldwide. Until 2017, Kentucky Fried Chicken owned more than 21,000 restaurants in more than 200 cities across the world. With its strict and unified management and clean and elegant dining environment, KFC leaves a good impression on hundreds of millions of customers.

On November 12, 1987, KFC opened a three-story restaurant in the center of the Beijing and then started to march into mainland China. 

Upon its arrival, KFC not only took the lead in introducing the concept of modern fast food into China, but also made people realize the fundamental difference between traditional Chinese diet and modern fast food. KFC also influenced people's concept of food service.

KFC is by far the most popular fast food chain in China. A key to its success in the country is that the food satisfies the tastes of local people. KFC' s menu in China is different from other countries. While KFC in China serves fried chicken, they also serve a variety of local dishes, such as egg tarts, porridge (rice porridge) and a full Chinese breakfast menu.

On Weibo, one of the most popular Chinese social platforms, KFC has more than two million followers. The company always releases advertisements, new product information, new spokespeople and other information on Weibo to maximize its social media exposure.

KFC China created its own public account on Wechat which has similar functions like twitter. It always releases KFC's latest activities and product information. Also, the company offers a lot of discount coupon on Wechat public account, that attract more people to follow KFC China on Wechat. Besides, on the menu of KFC China's account on Wechat, people can click self-service for "no queue for mobile phone orders," which increase the efficiency of on-line and off-line services, helps to reduce customers' worries about queuing up to order. This service greatly strengthens the restaurant and improve dining efficiency.

Celebrities and social media 

In 2006, KFC's parent company Yum Brands spun its Chinese operations off into Yum China, a separate entity.  In recent years, Yum China president and COO Joey Wat has led the company through an aggressive push to capture China's millennial consumers, known domestically as the post- 90s generation. Since Wat's tenure began in 2006, KFC has embarked on a relentless campaign, reinventing its brand as a trendy connoisseur of millennial Chinese culture. 

Chief amongst Wat's strategies has been the company's headlong dive into the realm of celebrity endorsements. KFC introduces new products with the aid of hugely popular entertainers including Lu Han, Joker Xue and TFBoys, a three-member boy band which has a following of over 100 million on Weibo. 

For example, in 2017, KFC collaborated with TFBoys and launched a new product: "the Angry Burger". After becoming the spokesgroup, TFBoys immediately began promoting the new product for KFC. The strategy of "celebrity+ product" looks simple and direct, but its effect is obvious; increasing fan consumption. TFBoys put KFC advertisements on Weibo which lead to 270 million views and more than one million discussions. If KFC just used the band  to promote its own brand image, fans would be a little confused, asking "well, what do my idols have to do with KFC?" But by connecting the band with a specific product, KFC connects directly with fans who then go to the store and buy it.

Another example of KFC using a celebrity to endorse its products has 70k views and 1.7k likes on Youtube. KFC invited one of the most popular singers in China, Lu Han, who has a large number of fans with strong purchasing power to introduce its new kind of pizza. 

Social media campaign 1 

In 2008, China's KFC started to sell the "five sides of tender cattle," its first beef product. The company stopped selling it in 2012. After it was no longer available,  it was ranked as the number one top selling product in China. In 2017, KFC announced a re-launch of the "five sides of tender cattle," with the same Sichuan spicy taste and price as nine years before. Sales were limited to three million orders in the whole country.  At the same time, KFC launched its advertising film, "I want it! I want it! five sides of tender cattle." The song's lyrics contain hot comments about missing this product. People started to feel nostalgic, and they discussed the product on Weibo with 80 million views and ten thousand discussions. The song's video had over five million views on Tencent video. 

The purpose of nostalgia marketing is to use products as a medium to "revive the feelings" and to create closer ties with consumers. The reason that KFC China re-launch this product was it listened to the customers. Chinese people has express their wishes of re-launch the product for several years. A lot of Chinese people missed "five sides of tender cattle" and its taste, so when they knew that KFC had re-launched this product, they shared this information with their friends, family members, classmates and other people. When I saw this campaign on Weibo, I noticed a lot of people making comments and discussing the video, as people were feeling very happy about the product's re-launch.

"From 2008 to now, hundreds of thousands of messages, 

every word that you left is the meaning of its return."

Social media campaign 2

In 2018, KFC launched the "five sides of tender cattle" only for lunch. KFC invited ONER, a popular  Chinese group, to publicize this activity. ONER shot advertisements for KFC and published them on their Weibo account. The video played on Weibo more than four million times. And for the Weibo topic "Five sides of tender cattle only for lunch," there are 120 million views and more than 2 million discussions.

Social media campaign 3

First built on Hang Zhou in 2017, KPRO (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ready-to-pay-just-smile-yum-china-launches-new-kpro-store-in-hangzhou-300512828.html) was a new concept restaurant designed to offer a fresh, seasonal menu to a new generation of sophisticated diners. As a sub brand of Yum's KFC, KPRO's target audience was urban white-collar groups.To meet the needs of professionals in China's emerging cities, KPRO developed an innovative, modern, and seasonal menu that offered a variety of fresh, customized dishes.

Qu Cuirong, Yum's president and chief operating officer, noted that "We are very excited to introduce the concept of KPRO. KPRO will refresh the younger generation of consumers who are keen on new tastes and new technologies. KPRO is tailor-made for China's fast-growing urban white-collar workforce, bringing them innovative, ready-made, seasonal cuisine." At the same time, customers keen on digital technology can fully experience the mobile phone orders, face payment and other technology trends.

A major feature of the new restaurant is the integration of Alipay's new "smile payment" face recognition payment solution, enabling customers to pay without using their wallet. Alipay's unique payment technology uses a multi-step authentication process, including facial scanning and mobile phone numbers, to verify customer identity and promote payment.

The "Smile Payment" integration of Hang Zhou's new KPRO Restaurant is the first commercial application of global face recognition payment technology.

"Yum China has a history of using innovative technology to enhance in-store dining experience, and we don't think there's a better place to try out this advanced technology. Smiling payment will bring another convenience to customers, "said Jidong Chen, Biometrics' technology director. "We are very pleased to introduce Smile to Pay to KPRO customers."

KFC China also using an actor, Han Dongjun, as their spokesperson to publicize KPRO. Han put advertisement on Weibo, then KFC China "retwitte" it.


In order to publicize KPRO on Weibo, KFC encouraged Weibo users to write down their ideas about "fresh life," and then offered KFC gift cards to ten selected users as lucky customers.

Social mention

According to Social Mention.com, KFC in China has 32% strength, 37% passion, and 35% reach.

The strength points out that there is a 32% possibility that KFC in China is being discussed in social media.

Sentiment indicates the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative is 15:1.

Passion number of 7% means that not many individuals talking about KFC in China will do it repeatedly.

Reach shows the range of influence is 35%.

For Sentiment, consumers hold more neutral views than positive and negative. The graph shows that there are 44 people holding neutral views, 30 holding positive views, and only 2 people with a negative opinion.

 KFC China's top 5 keywords are China, holdings, shares, quarter, and jack.

Top user is about authors who frequently mentioned KFC China. Top five of them are jannycranny, WordPress.com VIP, reembamad5, bpinkball, and lydfri. 

The sourced that included in the search of  KFC China are photobucket, topix and wordpress. The photobucket involves 46 items, topix and wordpress own 20 and 10 items respectively.

Google Trend 

This is KFC China's google trend of interest from 2017/01/01 to 2018/10/21 which fluctuated over this period of time. We can see that there was a peak in April 2018 which was when KFC announced its re-launch of  "five sides of tender cattle". This announcement led to people's increased interest in KFC.

This trend shows the interest from the past 90 days until now. It clearly shows that peaks occurred in August, September, and October. These peaks may have been caused by KFC using ONER to publicize its products.

Micro- Index

I did a comparison between KFC and McDonald's using Micro-Index which is a platform that gives a comprehensive index weighted by the amount of mentions, readings, and interactions. It reflects the popularity of keywords on Weibo more comprehensively.

The purple line represents KFC and the blue line represents McDonald's. These four graphs show that in the time periods of one hour, 24 hours, 30 days or 90 days, KFC was mentioned more than McDonald's on Weibo. This means that Weibo users are more interested in KFC than McDonald's. KFC's Chinese menu is stronger than McDonald's and it also creates new products that appeal more strongly to Chinese consumers.  Also,  KFC invited more celebrities to publicize its products, and it cooperated with celebrities to launch its campaigns.