The Ocho & KFC

ESPN made waves on social media when they brought “The Ocho” —  a fake sports channel featuring obscure sports from the fan-favorite movie “Dodgeball” — to the real world for one day. For year two, how could ESPN and brand partner KFC raise the bar?

• With CubeYou (consumer insights) and Crimson Hexagon (social listening) we did a deep dive on ESPN and KFC fans, finding shared affinities in sports like skateboarding, boxing and cross-training.
• KFC’s audience skewed younger than expected, so Snapchat and Instagram Stories were elevated to priority platforms.

• The Big Idea was to make the iconic KFC bucket the star of the show… “Battle of the Buckets” branded every moment with an endlessly funny and own-able asset.
• A week-long social media content strategy built pre-launch buzz, event-day impact, and long-tail resonance and leveraged ESPN talent throughout.
• Programming all key ESPN and KFC channels for true “takeover” coverage across TV, Social and Display with a massive content package to own the day on August “The Ocho” 8th.

• 7.7MM Social Impressions
• 2.5MM Digital Impressions
• 112% Over-Delivery
• ESPN’s best performing Instagram Story EVER, with 3.3M impressions.

Opening slide garnered over 1.3M impressions, 160% above typical ESPN Instagram Story.


• All Sport Rotational delivered a 88% VCR and LiveStreaming delivered a 99% VCR.

Twitter received +480K impressions and +80K video views.
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Snapchat delivered 3.3M impressions with 90% of that being M13-34.