The Colonel Rocks Social Media
October 20, 2017 7:26 AM   Subscribe

Just last night, someone on Twitter noticed that the official account for KFC was actually following some people - eleven, to be precise. He took a closer look to find out why....

Turns out the official account for KFC follows each of the five former Spice Girls, and six guys named Herb. In other words - 11 Herbs and Spices.

Twitter thread with their discovery - and the blown-away responses - is here.

This is not the only time a corporation has had fun on social media - the feeds for Charmin and Taco Bell tend to have a sense of humor about themselves, while Innocent Drinks pulls people in with cute animal pictures and outdoor retailer Moosejaw Mountaineering will occasionally post musings like "Lasagna is just spaghetti cake."
posted by EmpressCallipygos (40 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wait... Moosejaw Mountaineering is not based in Moosejaw? Justin needs to get on this ASAP.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:37 AM on October 20, 2017


FYI, you apparently have to be logged into Twitter to see an account's Following list.
posted by solotoro at 7:37 AM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ah, sorry! Huffpost actually has a screenshot of the following list in their article here.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:39 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Twitter-lickin' good!
posted by chavenet at 7:43 AM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


I love things like this... such as @TheAverageShark only follows one twitter user: @Seal.

Or this, explained better by the Today Show than I could:
The "Sesame Street" team has been busy over the past week creating Twitter accounts for the show's main characters -- and they gave a nod to Snuffy's imaginary-friend storyline by making @MrSnuffleupagus's account private. Twitter accounts set to private can be seen only by the users they follow ... and Snuffy follows only one account: @BigBird.

That means @BigBird can see and talk to @MrSnuffleupagus on Twitter, but no one else can -- just like it used to be in the '70s and early '80s on Sesame Street!
posted by neilbert at 7:46 AM on October 20, 2017 [64 favorites]


Nihilist Arby's, on the other hand, follows no one.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:47 AM on October 20, 2017 [16 favorites]


Someone clearly thought they were being oh-so clever when they came up with this idea. And they were! I wonder how long they've been waiting for anyone to notice.
posted by Dysk at 7:47 AM on October 20, 2017 [18 favorites]


I just checked out one of the Herbs - apparently he spotted this himself when KFC followed him and the other 10 back in September, but somehow no one else caught on until now.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:50 AM on October 20, 2017


They should've followed this account: Jim Morrison Project. He ate more chicken than any man ever seen. The rest of those guy are just herbs.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:51 AM on October 20, 2017


Was just telling a friend about the marketing team behind a seemingly spontaneous tweet by Oreo. Thought I found that article via the blue, but can't find the link now. Did find this FPP about how companies try to manufacture memes.

And I had a small part in one similar corporate tweet on the zeitgeist. It didn't go viral, but it is a funny and timely use of social media by a company that you wouldn't expect to have a social media presence at all. I photographed one of the 2017 Nobel Physics prize winners at home on the day of the award. His breakfast was visible in the picture, including a large box of raisins. Sun-Maid Raisins then made a congratulatory tweet saying they like the way Rainer Weiss snacks.

(apologies for the sort-of self-linking)
posted by msbrauer at 7:53 AM on October 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Nihilist Arby's, on the other hand, follows no one.

Say what you will about the tenets of Wendy's Twitter, Dude, at least it's an ethos.
posted by solotoro at 7:57 AM on October 20, 2017 [21 favorites]


There are six guys named Herb?
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:00 AM on October 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Six verified guys, no less.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:03 AM on October 20, 2017 [12 favorites]


msbrauer, I love how in the Oreo article they keep mentioning what snacks they were eating at a particular moment.
posted by Emmy Rae at 8:05 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


There are five guys named Moe, too. And given that Moe'sSouthwestGrill follows some 38 thousand tweeters, there are probably five Moes in there somewhere.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:06 AM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Old Spice has fun on Twitter, too (posted to Imgur, where Old Spice also has fun)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:10 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Was just telling a friend about the marketing team behind a seemingly spontaneous tweet by Oreo.

Thing was it actually was spontaneous. They did indeed come up with it on the fly. But they were using a situation room/ops centre environment to run it, intentionally, because it was a big event and they were deliberately trying to be anticipatory.

It's a familiar environment to me, it's very similar to what happens in an emergency management command post. And they're right. It takes us about two years to go from zero to capable in a high-tempo environment, including lots of simulation and trial runs (we call them "table-tops"). We've just taken our national team from a catch-as-catch-can approach (necessary because all the jurisdictions and agencies we deal with all had different internal systems) to a much more structured nationalized Incident Command System (ICS) discipline, and that's almost exactly our time frame too.

No value judgement here on whether that's the right on wrong approach, but it's a familiar one. Now the social media folks just need to adapt the ideas of scalability and fail-over.

A nifty read while I ate my breakfast croissant. Thanks for the link!
posted by bonehead at 8:21 AM on October 20, 2017 [2 favorites]


Lasagna is just spaghetti cake.

I really wish I could think of clever things like this to tweet.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:44 AM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


No one has more fun than El Arroyo and their daily signs...
posted by jim in austin at 8:47 AM on October 20, 2017 [3 favorites]


Someone clearly thought they were being oh-so clever when they came up with this idea. And they were! I wonder how long they've been waiting for anyone to notice.

Considering the person who "organically" revealed the ploy works for a PR firm, I'd wager to speculate about as long as a *nudge wink* from someone in the industry.

I'm all for new forms of clever and innovative marketing, but the attention and enthusiasm campaigns such as this garner really makes me uncomfortable. What a weird evolution in the cultural zeitgeist.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 8:52 AM on October 20, 2017 [5 favorites]


Spurred by this thread, I checked the Five Guys twitter account and was disappointed to see that they follow waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than five people.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:59 AM on October 20, 2017 [11 favorites]


I saw this tweet, thought it was really clever and funny, checked the KFC twitter account to see it was real. Saw they had something called Georgia Gold chicken that I'd never heard of. Actually googled it to find out what was. Some kind of honey-mustard KFC? Might actually want to try that sometime.

There's pretty much no other way KFC could have gotten their new Georgia Gold through my ad blockers and not-ever-watching-commercial-TV habits. So good job KFC marketing.
posted by straight at 9:02 AM on October 20, 2017 [10 favorites]


I did a similar gag for my Mefightclub Dungeon Crawl bot (Trog is one of the game's deities).
posted by neckro23 at 9:03 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


There was this tweet by MoonPie around the eclipse which was a pretty big hit.
Hostess has declared Golden CupCakes the official snack cake of the eclipse. #SolarEclipse2017
@Hostess_Snacks
Lol ok
@MoonPie
posted by ODiV at 9:06 AM on October 20, 2017 [31 favorites]


Saw they had something called Georgia Gold chicken that I'd never heard of

You would have heard of this (woo! crispy! woo! tangy!) if you'd watched Southpaw Regional Wrestling, which you should have.
posted by uncleozzy at 9:52 AM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


Best corporate social media account, hands down, is Denny's at Tumblr - it has seriously made me reconsider boycotting Denny's. (No ethics issues involved; I just consistently got the worst service and the worst food, several times in a row, until I decided, nope, no more.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:27 AM on October 20, 2017 [4 favorites]


And given that Moe'sSouthwestGrill follows some 38 thousand tweeters, there are probably five Moes in there somewhere.

Attleboro, Massachusetts has this sublime juxtaposition. (It's a Five Guys and a Moe's in the same building)
posted by mkb at 10:42 AM on October 20, 2017


Twitter-lickin' good!

NSFW
posted by CynicalKnight at 10:43 AM on October 20, 2017


Except now they follow 16, the 11 mentioned above plus @dominos, @tacobell, @burgerking, @mcdonalds, and @wendys.
posted by Apoch at 10:57 AM on October 20, 2017


Nnnno, I'm still only seeing those 11 people in the KFC "following" list.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:59 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


I knew I should have taken a screenshot because now they're gone!
posted by Apoch at 11:01 AM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Attleboro, Massachusetts has this sublime juxtaposition. (It's a Five Guys and a Moe's in the same building)

I like my town's better. Five Guys, Dunkin Donuts AND Baskin-Robbins in the same building in Aiken SC. Heart Attack Alley! But what a tasty way to go.
posted by jhope71 at 11:40 AM on October 20, 2017


msbrauer, the Blue posting on the Oreo article is http://www.metafilter.com/164949/You-wonder-what-the-thing-is-thats-gonna-be-the-moment-youre-proud-of
posted by Frayed Knot at 1:13 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


So the spice to herb ratio is 5:6. Huh.
posted by parki at 4:16 PM on October 20, 2017


Wait, what? This is real? I saw tweets about this yesterday but it felt like a joke meme and so I giggled and then moved on.

THIS IS FUCKING REAL???

KFC has been knocking it out of the park with their attention getting maneuvers of late, although what they did to Darrell Hammond with making him think he was going to take over the roll and not just be one of a rolling mob of new Sanderses (11 so far) was kind of shitty.
posted by hippybear at 8:17 PM on October 20, 2017


Except now they follow 16, the 11 mentioned above plus @dominos, @tacobell, @burgerking, @mcdonalds, and @wendys.

Oh man, Jack and Carl are going to be PISSED!
posted by hippybear at 8:41 PM on October 20, 2017


Attleboro, Massachusetts has this sublime juxtaposition. (It's a Five Guys and a Moe's in the same building)

We have the same thing, but in reverse (plus some other tasty places that aren't in the song).
posted by candyland at 8:50 PM on October 20, 2017 [1 favorite]


Corporations tweet the darndest things
posted by interrupt at 7:56 AM on October 22, 2017


That means @BigBird can see and talk to @MrSnuffleupagus on Twitter, but no one else can -- just like it used to be in the '70s and early '80s on Sesame Street!

Considering the reason they retired Snuffy's imaginary friend status in the first place it seems a bit ill-conceived to bring it back on the internet.
posted by radwolf76 at 11:33 AM on October 22, 2017


The Denny's Twitter account is brilliant. That is all.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:29 PM on October 22, 2017


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