Yum! Brands and its subsidiaries are continuing their domination of recent Tickle City Award headlines. After covering their brand new KFC Yum! Center basketball arena, the Tickle City Award Committee has now been notified about a ticklish contest the company is running on Twitter.
The KFC Colonel’s Scholars program, one of the most respected academic institutes in the United States, is offering a contest in which the high-school senior who posts the best tweet containing the hashtag #kfcscholar will win $20,000 towards a college education.
This is one of the latest examples of a major brand attempting to maneuver their way to some a piece of the viral social media pie. If users enjoy sharing content produced by their friends, why won’t it be the same for mega multinational corporations?
According to the contest guidelines, the judging criteria will be 40% creativity, 30% need and 30% drive, which shouldn’t be a problem at all with Twitter’s limits. Crafting a clever message, showing determination and also somehow demonstrating your family’s financial situation should only take about 100 characters, giving users an additional 40 to add a brief resume or a list of references.
With only a couple of days remaining before the November 26 deadline, the tweets are flowing in. Possible contest ideas include tweeting about how many double double sandwiches the students would eat while in college or their plans for a major research project on the layers of flavor in KFC’s Famous Bowls.
KFC Scholars Twitter contest, you are tickle city!
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on November 25th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
Why is this contest a twitter contest? Why isn’t it a full-blown essay contest? KFC is going to give out 20,000 dollars for a less than one paragraph “essay”? I wish everything else in life was that easy.
Walsh Reply:
December 1st, 2010 at 11:38 pm
I think the idea is that in this day and age of skimming content online and shorter attentions spans, the skill to write well in a very concise manner will start to become more important. 140 characters is about as short as you can get…
You could also say it’s just a publicity stunt playing off the viral popularity of social media.
on November 29th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
OMG! 40% creativity, 30% need and 30% drive…to be fitted in such a short paragraph that twitter is limited to. Tsk Tsk Tsk this is really something.
Walsh Reply:
December 1st, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Yeah, I’d like to see the judges attempt articulate how they are applying these guidelines to the tweets. Or actually, just the fact that there are judges in this contest is pretty ridiculous.
on November 30th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
so like 7 words, 3 words, and 3 words for each category… (not literally but you get the idea)