Creating digital word-of-mouth requires thinking outside of the box. And that’s just what Burger King’s ad agency, Crispin Porter Bogusky is doing with the new BK Whopper Sacrifice Facebook promotion.
The idea behind the promotion is that you can trade in 10 of your Facebook friends for a free Burger King Whopper.
BK Whopper Facebook Application Promotion
What I like about the idea, is that it gets people talking. Even if someone is exposed to the idea but doesn’t act on trading in friends, they can still talk about it. And even better, is that the whole promotion is built around Facebook, which is all about conversations.
The application sends a message to each of the banished friends, bluntly alerting them that they were traded in for a free Whopper. Which is sure to generate additional conversations.
I’ve installed the app on my Facebook profile and it does create a nice visual on my profile page that reads, “Kevin is 10 sacrifices away from a free Whopper.” And asks, “Who will be next?”
One disappointment is that the installation does not appear to generate a Facebook story feed in my profile announcing, “Kevin has added the BK Whopper Sacrifice App to his profile.” With something extra like, “Be careful, or he could trade you in on a Whopper. If you’d like to trade Kevin in, click here.” Such a feed would generate a lot more digital word-of-mouth as it would begin to appear in status updates visible by my friends who are checking out my status updates.
This puzzles me since Facebook tends to generate a feed on about any other similar social action I choose. Perhaps I’ve missed something there.
I’d also be curious if the application announces a friend has been dumped on the friend’s feed as well. That would generate a lot more conversation, i.e. ribbing from their friends.
Measuring The Campaign’s Success
Since the application’s launch in late December, nearly 75,000 Facebookers have been traded in for a BK Whopper. That amounts to more than 7,000 coupons for free Whoppers.
But as is the case with social media, there are results that this campaign has created that we can’t measure. We can guess that 75,000 conversations probably at the minimum have occurred as a result of those who’ve received messages saying they’ve been dumped for a Whopper. But that number could 2x, 3x or more.
Another thing we can’t measure is how many people have purchased Whoppers sans coupon simply as a result of all the online and offline conversations and media publicity the promotion is generating. The story has been picked up a number of media outlets including the NY Times.
And I guess another thing we can’t measure is the negative impact it might have. If you were one of the friends to receive an email saying that you had been dumped for a BK Whopper, how would that influence your opinion of the brand? My hunch is that BK understand their audience well enough to realize that anyone that uptight has already been turned off by previous BK advertising anyway.
Despite the lack of measurability other than overall BK sales, I can’t imagine there’s not a marketer out there that wouldn’t love a marketing tactic that has this much potential to create digital word-of-mouth as well as traditional word-of-mouth.
From my own monitoring of the consumer feedback on blogs and such, the reactions are mixed. Which seems to be the case with anything online that generates response from more than a handful of people. Some love the cleverness of the idea, while others feel it’s crude and insulting.
Regardless, other conversations surrounding the promotion are starting to take place, even among those who haven’t traded-in friends. I’ve noted 2 of my Facebook friends have shared the BK Whopper sacrifice news stories on their profiles in the past 24 hours, as have I. Also, it’s generating some fun, as we’re now posting messages to each others’ profiles as the promotion ultimately leads to the burning question: “Which is worth more to you–my friendship or a BK Whopper?”
–Kevin McIntosh
