KFC Arabia has turned the temporary disappearance of its popular cheddar sauce, Chedrawi, into a viral AI-powered social media campaign that has generated millions of views across platforms.
The campaign, titled “The Missing Chedrawi Cheese,” was developed with advertising agency TBWA\RAAD after customers in Saudi Arabia reacted strongly to the sauce going off menus due to a stock issue. Fans flooded social media with complaints, memes and homemade recreations, turning what began as a routine supply problem into an online cultural moment.
Instead of issuing a standard apology, KFC Arabia launched a three-episode AI-generated drama series on social media. The campaign featured menu items such as fries, pickles, chicken strips and the missing Chedrawi sauce as fictional characters in a mystery storyline centered on the disappearance of the sauce and the search for who was responsible.
The campaign tapped into growing interest in AI-generated content and was designed specifically for platforms such as TikTok and Meta.
“We talk a lot in our industry about meeting consumers where they are, but very few brands are willing to follow that principle to its logical conclusion,” said Ahmed Arafa, Chief Marketing Officer at KFC. “With ‘The Missing Chedrawi Cheese’, we transformed a cultural moment into a serialized AI-powered content experience where a cheese sauce became the protagonist. Unconventional? Absolutely. But in today’s attention economy, unconventional storytelling is what cuts through a constantly scrolling feed. What made this especially powerful was the ability to leverage AI solutions to move at the speed of culture – rapidly developing creatives, adapting content formats, and scaling production with a level of efficiency traditional processes simply cannot match. AI is not replacing creativity, it is enabling brands to respond faster to trends.”
According to the company, the campaign generated more than 4 million views, 85,000 likes, 2,800 comments and 130,000 shares across Meta and TikTok without paid promotion.
The campaign also sparked strong audience participation online, with users debating plotlines, creating memes and even jokingly calling for a boycott of chicken strips for “betraying” the missing sauce.
“The community didn’t just consume the content, they became part of it,” said Tony Kayouka, Head of Social and Content at TBWA\RAAD. “This is real-time cultural listening at full throttle. The audience wrote the brief. Our job was to shape that energy into something they could step into and own.”
The campaign reflects a broader shift in regional marketing strategies, where brands are increasingly treating social media platforms as spaces for audience participation and co-creation rather than simply channels for advertising distribution.
