Burger King Facebook App

What happens when Burger King decides to use Facebook as its base for a new online marketing campaign? 233,906 people lose their friends… not real ones of course – the ones on Facebook.

What’s this all about – Burger King launched a promotion for US only, where you could install a Facbook application developed for Burger King which gave you a coupon for a free whooper after you deleted 10 friends from your list. You could of course add those friends right back on, but the idea was to show that you are willing to sacrifice friendship for a whooper (uhmm… yeah right).

People at Facebook apparently didn’t like this (surprise, surprise..) and disabled the application – after 233,906 friendships were “lost”.Weird story? – Yes, Maybe.  Stupid? – No, of course not. As much as I don’t like Whoopers, I have to admit that the marketing team at Burger King had a great idea for an online campaign. Not only did they prove a point (to some degree in a corrupted sort of way but still), they also generated lots of buzz around their company and their main product.

Apparently, the amount of buzz was big enough to get the attention of the Facebook team, which decided to pull the app. That of course generated even more buzz in an online community – think all the bloggers (hello!) writing about it and sharing it with their friends (I got this from a co-worker – thanks Jeremy!).

And that’s how we arrive at a viral marketing at its finest – hats off. Just please don’t make me eat that monstrosity of yours!

Come to think of it, this is not the first time Burger King is taking advantage of another company for its own marketing purposes. McDonald’s kind of comes to mind when BK made a TV ad with fake protests against the Big Mac, because Whooper is so much better (Yeah, and Pepsi tastes different than a coke!). Campaigns like this may work, but think of your branding guys and gals… or maybe that’s the whole point?

-Konrad