Fast-food giant whets workers’ appetites for its social network

How Yum! Brands enticed its staff with an internal marketing campaign

Your company is launching an internal social networking platform, and you’re hoping it will catch on. So you set a six-month target for participation; 40 percent sounds respectable, maybe even a little ambitious.

Want to know which company hit 70 percent in six months? Want to know how it did it? Read on.

Yum! Brands, parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and other major chains, built a Facebook-like internal social network called iCHING to connect its global staff.

Because Yum’s employees would have to change the way they accessed information once the network caught on, it was essential to pique their curiosity. So, the comprehensive promotional campaign included: a mysterious, 5-foot-tall letter “H” placed at key locations; videos showing the same letter “H” interacting with employees; buzz from a test group; and various other visual media.

Now that most employees have signed up, the new challenge is in getting employees to log onto iCHING rather than sending e-mails and scheduling meetings, says Toni Ewton, tech manager.