Burger King Asks You to Choose: Facebook Friends or Food?

[David Baxter PhD]

Burger King Asks You to Choose: Friends or Food?
by Scott Nichols, PC World
Jan 9, 2009

Burger King has had some pretty outlandish ad campaigns--most recently with the "Whopper Virgins" TV ads--but a new marketing scheme that utilizes Facebook is possibly its strangest yet. Burger King is asking people to drop ten friends on Facebook to receive a free whopper.

The Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app will let you print out a coupon good for one free whopper--after you drop ten of your friends. Normally, when someone drops a friend on Facebook it is done discretely, but Whopper Sacrifice handles it differently. The act is published in your news feed, saying "Scott sacrificed Becky Lowell for a free whopper."

Cruel? Perhaps.

Ridiculous? Definitely.

Effective? Hard to say.

A lot of people will probably drop the ten friends to get the whopper, but there is nothing stopping them from adding the friends back once they get a coupon. More than 50,000 people have already sacrificed friends for whoppers, so the app is getting attention. But most of all it seems that Burger King just wants the attention so people take notice of its bizarre advertising techniques, and on that end the Whopper Sacrifice is a rousing success.

 

[Sparrow]

Hello David,
I loath this article, but that's just me of course.
Just think of the commercial machine, dynamics, or interplay at work.
Pretty pathetic.
Under the auspices of PC World, didn't this Scott Nichols fellow have something more professional to perpetuate about other than a Burger King / Facebook application? And who is he besides a filler? He leaves himself out for fodder, and ridicule.
The shame of it all, but if I was a kid I would have probably been sold like...Way Keenoo Daddy-O!

 

[Eye Stigmata]

I heard about this on the radio today!!!

So weird...I think it may cause some hostility....and some hurt haha...If my friends chose a crappy burger over me...I'd be friggen ****ed! hahahaha

 

[Into The Light]

no, what you do is you all agree you're going to drop one another.... drop and then add back.. rinse and repeat, then you all go for burgers together

 

[Halo]

no, what you do is you all agree you're going to drop one another.... drop and then add back.. rinse and repeat, then you all go for burgers together

:loveit: That is totally what I am going to do :lol:

 

[y-bloc]

I wouldn't drop an enemy for a whopper. what a weird and twisted way to try and trick people into eating trash.
I keep bumping up ancient posts with silly comments, but anything fast-food IRKS me.