KFC did not rent an audience for its game show. It built one over three years and cast the show from it.
KFC Turned 50,000 Fans Into a Game Show, and the Audience Was the Casting Call
KFC UK&I and agency Mother premiered "Don't Crack" on the brand's YouTube channel on Sept. 30. It is a broadcast-length game show in which 30 superfans face four escalating tests of devotion, with 50,000 pounds and the title of Ultimate Believer at stake. None of the contestants are actors. They came out of the campaign: in March KFC asked "How Much Do You Believe in Chicken?", 9.8 million people scanned a QR code that led to a casting page, and more than 50,000 applied.
The show closes the third chapter of the Believe in Chicken platform, launched in 2024. According to Creative Salon, KFC has reached its highest ever positive brand impression since Believe began, advertising awareness hit 26.0 in 2025 (up from 19.4 and the highest since tracking started in 2013), and net sales grew 6.4% year over year. KFC UK&I CMO Monica Silic said the brand chose 30 minutes over 90 seconds because long-form is what makes people care who wins. This is a UK campaign, so treat it as a case study.
Look at the order of operations. KFC built a fan universe first, then asked the fans to star in it. The show is not the idea, the three-year platform is. If you want a game show, earn the cast first.
Echoes the Sept. 28 e.l.f. story: format-led marketing. Participation mechanics (QR scan, application, casting) turn an audience into content and data. Ask students to map the funnel from QR scan to applicant to contestant, and name the metric at each step.
Advertising Week opens with creators at the center of the program, and a dollar figure attached.
Advertising Week Opened With a $100 Million Creator Challenge and 2,500 Creators in the Room
Advertising Week New York runs Oct. 5-8 at The Penn District, and its first Chief Creator Officer, Dhar Mann, opened the show by launching the $100 Million Creator Challenge, with live challenges meant to turn introductions into deals on the spot. Thursday is a six-hour Creator Day that replaces panels with 30-minute games, demos and live challenges involving creators, celebrities and senior marketers. Advertising Week says participating creators collectively reach more than 600 million followers.
The attendance number is the tell. Roughly 2,500 creators are expected, up from about 1,000 in 2025, at a conference that drew more than 20,000 marketers last year. Global president Ruth Mortimer says the aim is to demystify the creator economy for brands and the brand world for creators. Digiday's opening-day read describes an industry rebuilding amid uncertainty. WPP Media forecast last year that creator-driven platforms were on pace to out-earn traditional media for the first time.
A deal target changes how a conference feels. Instead of talking about creator marketing, brands are being asked to sign something. If you are walking the floor this week, bring a budget range, a usage-rights position and a decision-maker, or you are only networking.
Compare this with the Sept. 29 creator income data: most creators earn little, and a deal-making week is an attempt to widen the pipe. Ask students who captures the value when a live challenge turns into a contract: the creator, the agency or the event.
ChatGPT ads keep adding formats. This one sits next to image generation.
OpenAI Will Test Visual Ads Inside ChatGPT Image Generation
OpenAI says it will begin testing a new visual ad format in ChatGPT later this month in the U.S., showing clearly labeled visual ads during image generation, per an Oct. 5 item on LLM Stats. It follows the Sept. 16 "Reimagining advertising with AI" announcement, which added Sponsored Agents (a click opens a labeled conversation with a brand's own agent, in a U.S. test), natural-language campaign building and official HubSpot and Shopify integrations. No pricing was published.
Criteo, OpenAI's first ad-tech partner, reports more than 2,000 brands running campaigns through it, with ChatGPT traffic converting at roughly 1.5 to 2 times the rate of traditional referral traffic. Those are the partner's numbers, not an independent audit, and measurement inside ChatGPT is still early and aggregate-only.
Every new format is a creative question before it is a media question. A visual ad that appears while someone is generating an image needs to feel like part of the moment, not an interruption. Worth a small, labeled test when the account is ready.
One ad-tech name has direct exposure to the ChatGPT ads story.
Criteo (CRTO): The Ad-Tech Name Closest to the ChatGPT Ads Story
Criteo was the first ad-tech partner integrated with OpenAI's ChatGPT ads pilot, and it says more than 2,000 brands are now running campaigns with it. Management expects OpenAI and broader agentic-AI work to become meaningful growth drivers in 2027. The 52-week range on a Yahoo Finance quote page was $16.15 to $38.48, and a recent Criteo trade was reported near $17.58, so the shares sit near the bottom of that range. No live price was pulled for this edition.
The case against is real. A Simply Wall St note calls out execution issues and client churn that outweigh the AI upside. A Parqet summary also mentions a reported takeover approach from Vista Equity and Quinti Capital that sent shares up 29%, and the date of that report is not confirmed here, so verify it before relying on it.
A small cap tied to one of the most watched ad channels, with churn on the other side of the ledger. That makes it a good case study in how a platform partnership can lift a story without fixing a business. Treat it as a watch item, not a pick.
⚠️ Not investment advice. Verify independently before any decision.
Refreshed weekly. Out with the stale, in with what is on the radar right now.
Ted Lasso, Season 4
Weekly episodes on Apple TV, running through October 7. Still earning the return.
Apple TV"The Art of the Brand" Podcast
Camille Moore and Phillip Millar's brand-strategy conversations remain a standing listen.
PodcastBrands & AI on CNBC
CNBC's Sept. 30 market blog: Meta is up nearly 29% for September on Muse, and Mattel named Roger Lynch CEO as its stock hit a 52-week low.
CNBCCoach Cignetti & the Hoosiers
IU was 4-0 entering Saturday night's trip to Rutgers. Nebraska is next, then Ohio State on Oct. 17.
Multiple Outlets