Although some may say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, on the surface this one appears to be a real, em, whopper.
During its ‘Whopper Sacrifice‘ campaign, Burger King offered a free burger to anyone who ditched 10 of their friends on Facebook. Burger King proudly dubbed its Whopper stronger than friendship. Indeed, the concept fits well into BK’s gonzo marketing under the watch of CMO Russ Klein and Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
The result: nearly 234,000 people were ‘unfriended’ on Facebook until Burger King pulled the plug. It seems to be turning social marketing a bit on its head. For every 10 satisfied Whopper gobblers, you have 100 people feeling somewhat flame-broiled.
To get a look inside Klein’s head, check out his keynote speech (mp3 podcast here) at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference, where he talks about the theme of ‘social currency’ as an evolution of word-of-mouth into a real-time collective conversation in the marketplace.
Well, it certainly generated some buzz:
Instead of using social media to create buzz, the campaign targeted the foundations of social media itself in order to meta-amplify the buzz.
The buzz may not be sustained over time; but seen purely as a branding effort, one can say ‘well done’.
