So hows this for viral marketing – Burger king will give you a free whopper if you delete 10 of your friends via facebook. You install the Whopper Sacrifice app on facebook and your friends are notified that they have been sacrificed. HA – I can’t figure out if this is clever or gross. Not particularly apealing to me since I’m a vegetables only kinda person – but then again sometimes I just crave THE BACONATOR!!! (j/k)
What do you guys think about this kind of marketing? Are companies just getting desperate for business? OR are they being incredibly clever with social media? Leave a comment and let me know!
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kyle steed says:
I think they’re desperate. Have you seen the BK commercials where they travel to remotes part of the world to have people who don’t even know what a cheeseburger is to try a whopper. Well it’s no wonder they like a whopper because it’s chalked full of chemicals that make you want more of it.
January 9th, 2009 at 7:59 am
Aaron Irizarry says:
Yeah… pretty clever. As someone who eats a burger from time to time… I tried the baconator once…..
once.
Needless to say i wont be eating it again.
January 9th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Liz says:
I think that shows how desperate they are for attention.
January 9th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Khayyam Wakil says:
I’d ditch them just to see their reactions that I love meat more than I love being their friends
(p.s. I don’t eat meat)
Just say NO to fast food. This is your brain… this is your brain on Whopper. Any questions?!
January 9th, 2009 at 9:04 am
K says:
If you like fast food, you think this is great. If you think fast food is destroying America, you think this smacks of desperation. The fact is, Burger King has been doing very well every since they changed up their branding and promotion in this manner.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:15 am
crazywabbit says:
Sick, they are crazy and gone mad, only the loosers will do this.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Steph Adamo says:
I hate fast food, but i think this is damn clever. Maybe i’m the exception who proves the rule.
January 9th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Chad (@poweredbysteam) says:
OK, so first of all, an important part of this is dropping fast-food pre-conceived notions when thinking about the campaign itself. A lot of the comments so far have been ‘fast food is sick and ruining America. Desperation.’ To evaluate the success of the campaign, you must first remove any bias toward the product or end that the product achieves.
From purely a campaign standpoint, I think the stuff they’ve been doing is really cool. The whole POINT is to do exactly what Khayyam said. It’s a pretty clever commentary on the nature of online relationships (whether they intended on making a post-modern commentary on modern social media or not haha).
Additionally, their target audience is the teenage/college market. They’re hitting up all of the kids that are going to BK after school or late night and who are subsequently also all using Facebook. Their target market is not averse to the effects, flavours, and dangers of fast food.
I’ve actually had this discussion on other places back with the perfume thing they did. I think sometimes the social media ’scene’ as it were takes itself a bit too seriously. There’s so much talk about ‘connections’ and ‘people value’ and ‘customer service’ that I think a lot of us forget that we can joke around too. This campaign is meant to take the social media idea and turn it on itself.
And besides, Niki, as a vegetarian, wouldn’t sacrificing your friends for a free burger you won’t even eat (perhaps go so far as to say despise?) a great way to stick it to your friends? (unless you would be ideologically opposed to participating, which I totally understand)
January 9th, 2009 at 10:40 am
kenroy george says:
i believe every company is desperate to make money even if it means having someone loose a few “facebook friends”.
i wouldn’t do it though since it’s not that much to get a whopper…
but if you can’t get a whopper nor can your friends get one for you then i don’t think you need em anyway
kenroy
January 9th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Stuart Robertson says:
I think it’s a very funny ad campaign — and it gets people talking about the company + product, which is what they want.
If anyone actually *does* delete 10 of their friends to get a whopper… well, that gets people talking too.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
dave says:
I think this and the other new campaigns by BK are cool (and likely to be succesful) because they are experimenting with social media, rather than just following the crowd. I never go to BK though so I’ll keep my friends.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Nikki - Logo Design Guru says:
Wow, the concept has a lot of thought behind it but it makes no sense. What benefit does BK get out of their customers deleting their friends? Does BK have something against facebook? the concept is just so weird, i would agree with it being on the “gross” side.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Jorge says:
How many of us are vegetarians? =P
Burguer King marketing has always been gross… All of Burguer King, actually…
January 9th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Angie Bowen says:
First I’ll go ahead and admit that I’m a “fast food is evil” vegan so I find this pretty gross. I agree with Nikki and wonder why BK wants people to delete their friends on Facebook. I don’t really understand their reasoning behind it.
January 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Chad (@poweredbysteam) says:
Angie, Nikki:
It’s buzz, word of mouth, getting people talking about Burger King, as Stuart said. They aren’t out to erode your friendships (I’m assuming you can simply re-add those on your list, and there will be a list so you can remember who you deleted. If that isn’t the case, then they did indeed bungle the campaign), but….well, if it works right, here’s how it will play out, and what their reasoning is (if you don’t like BK/fast food, pretend it’s something else, another restaurant perhaps, being marketed instead of fast food):
Teen A does the 10 deletions and gets his free Whopper. This in turn informs those 10 deletions about their newfound status as ‘less than that of a whopper.’ Longing to vindicate their status (and get a free burger themselves), they use the app as well, presumably deleting the person who deleted them first as an act of ‘revenge’ (bearing in mind that this is all in good fun, unless you’ve got some weird folks playing it, but they’re the exception, not the rule). As each person exacts their ‘revenge’, they have to pick 9 *more* people in order to get their free burger. Hence it multiplies and replicates itself through the system.
Teens A, B, and C now have free Whopper tickets. Let’s assume (likely) that they’re average, middle class teenagers, and thus, have jobs and are not total cheapskates or coupon clippers. They go into BK with their free ticket in hand. But they’re not going to just get a burger. No, they need the meal to go with that. So what do they do? Hand the cashier the ticket for the Whopper, and then *purchase* fries and a drink. Because of the free coupon, BK gained their attention (a BIG DEAL, especially in the crowded fast food market) and their choice of places to go eat out that night because they had a coupon to spend there.
Moreover, the strong possibility exists that going to BK may also be part of a larger social event. Perhaps there’s a group of teens hanging out on Friday night, maybe they’re killing time before a game, or some other social/school event. When they ask the question ‘Where should we eat tonight, guys?,’ there’s going to be a person in the group with a free BK coupon, so that person says, ‘hey, let’s go to BK, I’ve got a free Whopper coming.’ Boom. With that, BK just nailed a large pool of sales just by giving away that one coupon.
Now you think about the nature of ad campaigns. They run this totally off FB. That means, all they had to to do to launch was plan it out, then pay a designer to create the layout, then a FB app developer to code out the actual app. By marketing and ad standards, that’s a relatively cheap investment that, likely, will turn into pretty big gains.
I am by no means a fast food advocate, and I haven’t eaten BK in months, but I think that lately, between this, the Whopper Virgins campaign, and the Fire Meets Desire perfume, they’ve been doing a really fantastic job in the word of mouth sector of their marketing, with some really compelling social media marketing-based experiments.
January 10th, 2009 at 12:42 am
Niki says:
Thanks everyone for the comments! I love the discussion going on here
I definitely think we will see more of the type of advertising in the future weather we like it or not.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Chris Hebrrt says:
Honestly, after reading such a suggestion of Burger King, I was disgusted. How dare any industry try to manipulate social media to the point they are rewarding individuals for deleting their friends. I have a better idea, don’t download their facebook application and boycott Burger King. The whole concept puzzles me as to how youth users would be tempted to even think of using this ridiculous application.
Niki, you’ve chosen a great concept for debate & we can all agree to disagree.
This whole marketing ploy has made me not want to purchase anything from their establishment.
Chris
January 10th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Lee says:
I think this is a win for burger king because it has everyone talking about it. Even a bad ad it seems can be good for business if it stirs up conversation. As the saying goes “as long as you get the name right” all is good.
January 11th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Juliet van Ree says:
Hmm.. I don’t know, it could be a nice one for teenagers. That category tends to be more radical. However I think it’s negative publicity with the 21+ category. I wouldn’t choose this as a marketing campaign.
January 11th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Eva Vesper says:
This is like the silliest thing ever. But sounds devilishly fun! I wonder what BK’s marketing team was thinking…
Maybe we can give away hosting accounts if you agree to eat 10 Whoppers and delete 100 friends. Oh the insanity. =)
January 15th, 2009 at 6:05 am
Selena says:
I think the idea of deleting 10 friends to get a free whopper is insane. I don’t understand what BK has to gain from the deletion of facebook members.
At the same time, I do agree that from a marketing standpoint, it will definitely get attention and some people will do it. I also think that the status of the economy makes the timing right for BK to give away something free and what better to give away than one of their best sellers? But I’m baffled at where facebook comes in. Yes it says “You like your friends, but you LOVE the whopper.” but still are people that desperate to delete friends for a free burger that’s cheap anyway? I like the slogan, but I think dragging facebook into is crazy. But maybe that’s the point – just to think outside of the box, be different, & get attention.
January 15th, 2009 at 6:57 am
Gareth Coxon - Dot Design says:
Its a great campaign in terms of the huge amount of publicity BK will have gained from it, but it is cheap and trashy in terms of its approach but then their food is too! The adverts shelf life is limited though, its new now but give it 3 weeks and it will be forgtten.
I came across this article which is quite interesting, it looks like FaceBook have closed down the campaign due to privacy issues: http://tinyurl.com/77jg7g
January 16th, 2009 at 1:26 pm