KFC launches Don’t Crack, its own £50,000 game show on YouTube

KFC has made its own game show. Don’t Crack, a 32-minute original from the agency Mother, premiered on KFC’s YouTube channel this week and puts 30 of its most devoted fans through four challenges for a £50,000 prize and the title of Ultimate Believer. The contestants were picked from 50,000 applicants after a casting call that KFC says drew 9.8 million responses.

How Don’t Crack works

The rounds are built on the brand’s own mythology. In Blind Faith, blindfolded players hunt for golden eggs while avoiding traps; in Acts of Devotion, pairs perform to prove who believes more; in Eyes on the Prize, laser headsets punish anyone who looks away from the egg. The final, Tears of Joy, asks the last players, sitting in giant nests, to shed a single tear of joy. The contestants range in age from 22 to 65 and include a police sergeant, a Tube driver and a self-described witch, as Creative Review reported.

Pablo Rochat directed it, with Iconoclast and Little Dot Studios producing and Jessie Swanson, who has worked on Celebrity Juice, as producer. Mother’s executive creative directors Tomas Coleman and Derek Man Lui said the agency has spent three years building “the absurd universe of Believe in Chicken, establishing its own rituals and mythology”.

Why it matters

This is a brand making entertainment rather than advertising around entertainment. A half-hour show on its own channel costs a fraction of a TV slot and, if it works, earns attention rather than renting it. The 9.8 million figure is KFC’s own and counts responses rather than viewers, so the real test is how many people sit through 32 minutes of fans crying at golden eggs.

It works because the platform was built for it. Believe in Chicken has always treated KFC fans as a slightly unhinged congregation, and a game show is the obvious next ritual. It is a long way from the brand’s most famous moment, the FCK apology, and from its quieter work this year, the Surrender to Tender film, also by Mother.