Facebook DeFriends A Mischevious King

Posted in Social Media by Rob Oldham on January 14th, 2009

 

Did one of your Facebook friends cash in your deep rooted friendship for a flame broiled slab of meat?

If not, don’t worry, you’ve got some really loyal friends or maybe they are all just vegetarians?

Facebook disabled the “Whopper Sacrifice” app after 82,000 Facebook users gleefully deleted some 230,000 not-so-tight-knit friendships on their Facebook pages.

The tongue in cheek, quasi-mean-spirited “Sacrifice” campaign by Burger King promised one free Whopper for people who deleted 10 Facebook friends (and here’s the kicker, the friends were then officially notified by the wise old King that they’d been dumped for a burger).

Number two burgermeister BK’s been hitting it hard as of late with a series of headline grabbing ad/stunts: Whopper Freakout, Whopper Virgin, Meat scented cologne FLAME and now the Whopper Sacrifice campaigns. They are all a bit twisted and each campaign has been labeled as crass and tasteless, thereby generating a great deal of media attention and a barrage of “I’m shocked there is gambling in Casablanca” type hand wringing in the mainstream media, where a great deal of the rather staid and unimaginative ad campaigns trotted out each day are completely ignored by all.

Are these stunts/ads the real future of viral marketing? Do we even need to see an ad campaign anymore? Or is just hearing about a campaign’s existence the next wave?

If you were dumped by your good pal(s), your BFF’s, before the Sacrifice app was disabled, for a mere burger, then BK has thoughtfully set up a thing called Angry-Gram that you fill out, and shoot back at them, telling your good “friend(s)” how you really feel about them.

4 Responses to 'Facebook DeFriends A Mischevious King'

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1. Abbey said, on January 15th, 2009 at 10:36 am
   
   

   I’m not going to slam BK because I really like their BK mocha joe. yum. :) I think the ads are fun and harmless. Isn’t the saying ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’? Obviously some people have some serious whopper love!

   Oh, the angry-gram, love it!

2. Carrie said, on January 15th, 2009 at 11:12 am
   
   

   We’ll find out in February, when BK releases its Q2 earnings, if these campaigns have resulted in boosted sales, but consider Subservient Chicken—BK’s previous, legendary viral campaign, executed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the firm responsible for these latest stunts: as a result of Subservient Chicken, sales of BK chicken sandwiches doubled and the microsite allegedly got around 1 billion hits and over 100 million unique visitors. So far WhopperVirgins.com has gotten around 250,000 unique visitors. Those numbers will probably continue to grow but it’ll be really interesting to see if there is an actual return on investment for BK.

3. Posts about Viral Marketing as of January 15, 2009 | The Lessnau Lounge said, on January 15th, 2009 at 11:36 am
   
   

   […] viral marketing tools” ? Start submitting your articles to article banks, ezine directories Facebook DeFriends A Mischevious King - blog.bfgcom.com 01/14/2009 Facebook DeFriends A Mischevious King Posted in Social Networks by Rob […]

4. Never Fear, Pringles Is Here (To Help The Oversharers) said, on May 7th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
   
   

   […] I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with that statement, I do love this campaign. Like Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice on Facebook, this shows that Pringles gets it. They understand their audience and the things about […]

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