Dive Brief:

• KFC Canada unveiled on its website Colonel & Co. the Bitcoin Bucket, a limited-time offer of 10 original recipe chicken tenders, waffle fries, a medium side, gravy and two dipping sauces — available for $20 worth of the cryptocurrency bitcoin.  
• The fast-food company announced the promotion on its social media channels, with an image of a bucket of chicken and the fluctuating value of bitcoin set against the Canadian dollar. The message reads, "Sure, we don't know exactly what bitcoins are, or how they work, but that shouldn't come between you and some finger lickin' good chicken." The brand is promoting the effort with the hashtag #BitcoinBucket. 
• The Bitcoin Bucket is only available in Canada, according to The Drum. Customers pay for the item with BitPay, and KFC is offering delivery to certain areas. The Bitcoin Bucket was sold out as of Jan. 12 but more will become available in the future, according to posts on KFC Canada's Twitter page. 

KFC Canada presents The #Bitcoin Bucket. Sure, we don’t know exactly what Bitcoins are, or how they work, but that shouldn’t come between you and some finger lickin’ good chicken. https://t.co/2OKuCHk5Hb pic.twitter.com/UwaduB8toi

— KFC Canada (@kfc_canada) January 11, 2018

Dive Insight:

The Bitcoin Bucket is the latest KFC marketing stunt that embraces social media to engage with customers and put a parodic spin on emerging technology. Crytocurrencies like bitcoin are shaking up the financial world and a number of other industries, but a lot of people still don't have a full grasp on how they — or their underlying technology, blockchain — work.

The brand admitting its own lack of understanding might create more resonance with newcomers and has clearly attracted a lot of interest from the bitcoin-savvy, as the offer is sold out. Some of the campaign's messages include: "Give us your Bitcoins. Then tell us how to use a Bitcoin" and "Was Satoshi the Colonel all along?" (Satoshi Nakamoto is the mysterious and as-yet-unidentified creator of bitcoin).

The promotion shows how marketers can incorporate trending headline news into their marketing, dovetailing on bitcoin's frequent, often dramatic value fluctuations. Last year, KFC similarly ribbed artificial intelligence and voice recognition technology by installing animatronic robots at some of its drive-thrus, which converted employees' speech into Colonel Sander's distinctive Southern drawl. For Cyber Monday, the brand also created a $10,000 escape pod equipped with signal-blocking technology to help people escape the chaos of the digital deals day. 

KFC is not the first fast-food brand to bring cryptocurrency into its marketing strategy. In August, Burger King Russia tested "WhopperCoin," a bitcoin-derivative reward program that offers customers tokens in a digital wallet so that they can make purchases or transfer and trade the tokens online for a monetary value.