Recently, in posts from multiple Facebook pages named KFC Fans (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), it has been claimed:
“To celebrate KFC’s 74th birthday, anyone who sends the text ‘Happy Birthday’ by August 10 will be sent a free food voucher. Each voucher can be used at any KFC restaurant to get five pieces of chicken for free! Plus cash and a car.”
See some of such posts here, here, here, here, here.
The related posts mentioned here have been shared more than 37,500 times.
On another page with the same name, the same campaign has been seen being conducted in Spanish. See here.
Fact-check
Rumor Scanner Team’s investigation found that, on the occasion of KFC’s alleged anniversary, KFC has not offered free food vouchers, cash, cars, etc., to everyone through any special coupon. Rather, this claim has been promoted from multiple fake pages.
In the investigation regarding this matter, observation of the Facebook pages from which the discussed posts were published shows that these pages were created between August 4–6 and, apart from the posts about this offer, have no other posts.
In the comment section of a viral related post, following the instructions in the post, a member of the Rumor Scanner Team commented “Happy Birthday.” Immediately afterward, the member received a message in their inbox from the page saying:
“👋Hello ____ Thank you for participating, and please tell us which city you live in 🎁🎁🎂💰💵!!”
After mentioning the name of a city, the reply message stated:
“👋Hello, the main condition for receiving the prize is to share our post in 10–15 Facebook groups before the event ends. We will give you 15 minutes to share our post. After finishing sharing, please wait for us to contact you because our team will check how many shares you have. Share now! 🎁🎁🎁🎂💰💵!!”
Even though it was stated that this was done, as of the publication of this report, no further message had been received.
Further investigation found no news of such an offer on KFC’s official Facebook page.
Additionally, according to information on KFC’s official website, KFC was founded on March 20, 1930, in North Corbin, Kentucky, USA, as “Sanders Court & Café.” The first franchise opened on September 24, 1952, in Salt Lake County, Utah. This means KFC was not launched in August. Therefore, the claim of a special related offer in August is also baseless.
Last December, a similar claim was promoted mentioning KFC’s 73rd birthday. At that time, when KFC Bangladesh’s verified Facebook page was contacted regarding this, they also confirmed to Rumor Scanner that they had not given any such offer.
Therefore, the offer claiming to give everyone free food vouchers, cash, cars, etc., through a special coupon on the occasion of KFC’s alleged anniversary is fake.
Source
- Rumor Scanner’s own analysis
