Fast food brands' battle to capture Millennials' attention and dollars continues to escalate, with KFC firing the latest outrageous shot.
For a limited time, KFC is offering chicken corsages for prom night.
Actually, it's a $20 kit, orderable online through Kentucky-based florist Nanz & Kraft.
Buyers receive the basics, including baby's breath, and a $5 voucher for the piece of chicken that's to be attached, redeemable at their local KFC outlets. The choice of chicken part and KFC variety (Extra Crispy, Kentucky Grilled or Original Recipe) is up to them.
The hitch: KFC only asked Nanz & Kraft to make 100 of the fowl accessories, and 50 were gone as of Monday (although the florist has said that they're ... er ... game to make more if KFC wants to continue the offer).
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But it seems a safe bet that KFC's goal was social media capital, not making a few bucks on corsage sales.
The QSR started promoting the novelty in an online ad last week, which rapidly drew a quarter-million views, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
KFC's two-minute video on YouTube, showing the hilarious reactions (nearly all conveyed with facial expressions) of a high school girl and her parents, as her prom date presents her with a drumstick corsage – and a coda in which she chomps into the drumstick while slow-dancing with her beau – has pulled nearly 490,000 views since it was posted on April 9.
KFC goosed the social flurry with a sponsored BuzzFeed listicle, "12 Best Ways to Ask Someone to Prom," in which the last item is a link to the video.
The promotion has also garnered plenty of action on Twitter, including hundreds of retweets of chicken corsage image call-outs from BuzzFeed, "Good Morning America" and Styleite, among others.
What next? Forget fast-food fragrances. Burger King and Pizza Hut have already gone there, with branded perfumes that smell like cheeseburgers and freshly baked pizza dough, respectively.