What if your next gaming challenge was not defeating a boss, finding a rare weapon or saving a princess, but making fried chicken as quickly as possible? That is exactly what KFC asked gamers to do in 2023 when it turned The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom into an unlikely kitchen for its “The Recipe Run” campaign. The idea started with two strange coincidences inside the game. Tears of the Kingdom had introduced cooking as an important part of gameplay, including the ability to cook chicken. At the same time, one of the game’s characters looked remarkably similar to KFC’s Colonel Sanders. KFC Spain saw an opportunity in the coincidence and worked with Spanish creative agency PS21 and the speedrunning community Speedrun Español to turn it into a competition.
The challenge was simple to understand, even if it was not simple to complete. Players had to collect a piece of chicken, oil and 11 different herbs and spices scattered across the virtual world of Hyrule. They then had to cook their version of KFC’s Original Recipe chicken as quickly as possible. The campaign ran from June 23 to July 2, 2023, and was open to players from anywhere in the world.
KFC made the competition even more tempting with a prize that was impossible to ignore. The fastest player would receive a gold trophy shaped like a chicken thigh, valued at €11,000. French gamer Keuss eventually completed the challenge in one hour and seven minutes. But the trophy was only one part of the campaign. KFC also encouraged players to record and share their attempts online. The hashtag #TheRecipeRun started trending within hours and eventually generated more than 145 million social media impressions and more than 100 hours of organic content globally. The hashtag also represented 27% of the total conversation around KFC during the campaign period.
The campaign also gave players a reason to move from the virtual kitchen to a real one. Anyone who successfully completed the challenge received a code for a five-chicken-strip menu through KFC Spain’s website or app. In other words, KFC did not stop at getting gamers to talk about chicken. It created a direct path from a gaming activity to an actual KFC order. And people did participate. More than 2,500 players took part in Spain within a single week, while KFC Spain’s web traffic increased by 58% during the campaign. Desktop orders also rose sharply, accounting for 44.5% of orders compared with a five-month average of 12%. According to PS21, almost two-thirds of KFC restaurants in Spain received orders connected to the promotional codes, and 75% of those orders came from new users. The campaign also reached around six million people and received coverage from 436 media outlets, generating an estimated €5.47 million in PR value.
What makes The Recipe Run interesting is that KFC did not have to force itself into the game. It found something that was already there. Tears of the Kingdom already had cooking, chicken, herbs and a character that reminded players of Colonel Sanders. KFC simply connected those elements to something the brand already owned: its 11 herbs and spices. PS21 described the strategy as creating an interactive experience that respected the world of Zelda rather than forcing the brand into it. Instead of telling gamers to buy chicken, KFC gave them a reason to play. Instead of placing an advertisement inside a game, it created a challenge that became part of the gaming conversation. The reward was not only a gold trophy. Players got something to compete over, create content around and eventually redeem in the real world.
KFC had already been experimenting with gaming, from putting Colonel Sanders into Street Fighter 6 to building other gaming-related activations. But The Recipe Run showed how far the idea could go when a brand stops treating gamers simply as an audience and gives them something to actually do. KFC did not put an ad in Zelda. It gave gamers a side quest they wanted to complete, and somehow, that side quest ended with fried chicken.
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