Burger King’s the King of Internet Advertising

Posted on: June 23, 2009

By Daniel Ravner

Burger King is to internet advertising what Absolut Vodka is to print advertising, and what Apple is to television advertising. Like the latter brands Burger King gained a cool and authentic aura through creative and effective use of new media.  It developed a PR strategy that does not tip-toe around the buyer, but rather provocatively grabs his attention. So, will the Whopper be tastier after seeing a few of Burger King’s campaigns? Of course!

One of the first uses of Burger King’s internet advertising is the Subservient Chicken site, where a person dressed as a chicken mascot stands in front of a webcam and follows users’ commands. After users type in words such as jump or dance and hit the enter key, the chicken mascot does as told. If you’ve seen something similar, it was mostly likely an imitation of the Subservient Chicken (launched in 2004). There are over 300 commands that the chicken will agree to perform without coming up to the screen and saying no. Here’s part of the list.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMOPj6-4nDU

The Whopper Freakout, is a recent video campaign featuring a documentary of people’s reactions to the question, “What will the world be like without Burger King’s Whopper?” Customers were asked this question after they were told that the Whopper had been discontinued. Their reactions were filmed and combined together to create the film.

Burger King created a Facebook application that promises users a free Whopper, in exchange for a 10 friend sacrifice, (and once you delete a friend on Facebook, there’s no going back). This Whopper Sacrifice application completely contradicted with the goal of social networks for people to have as many friends as possible. Within just one week, 83,000 people deleted 233,000 thousand friends. Thus, Facebook approached Burger King and asked them to either delete the application or create a more positive application that does not interfere with Facebook’s goals. Burger King would not change the principle of their campaign and thus deleted the application. Nonetheless, the application’s one week run was more than enough to create worldwide buzz and turn this campaign worthy of Burger King’s Wall of Fame.

In another well received effort Burger King teamed up with Family Guy’s creator, Seth McFarlane to sponsor his Cavalcade of Comedy. Burger King asked Seth to create 50 two-minute episodes to be distributed throughout the internet through Google AdSense (a small advertisement video player, rather than Google advertisement text) to sites that are demographically aligned. Google placed these ads as prerolls or overolls. In this way, Burger King was the company that inititated the new kind of product placement that appeared in ten videos. This caused Burger King to gain distribution, buzz and PR around their innovative campaign. The first six videos reached 14 million views in three weeks.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_kbOQIg4sM

This type of video advertisement differentiates the company from its competitors in the fast food world. As those fast food companies who aim to reach everyone, keep their advertisements conservative and relatable by people off all backgrounds and ages. Those conservative commercials get lost in the pond together with all of the other millions of “safe” commercials out there. Burger King’s web campaigns speaks the language of its web audience  who respond by turning those  commercials into a viral phenomenon that is then talked about in forums and blogs, like BK Banned and BK Offensive and Seth McFarlane’s  BK on Youtube. The key here does not lie in mature executives creating “something that the kids will love,” but rather in working with teams that live on the net and ask them to create something that they will like.