Point Oh!

Today a colleague posed an interesting question to me.  She asked “are there any brands you can think of that have done a good job with Facebook?”  I genuinely want to be helpful in these situations but absolutely nothing came to mind that I would be willing to defend in a presentation.  Yes, Facebook is a valuable media property with some pretty intriguing demographics for a lot of different brands but have I ever seen a brand interaction on Facebook that I actually thought was valuable?  Nope.

That’s when I remembered a little buzz I heard about a Burger King promotion called Whopper Sacrifice.  The concept is simple, if you delete ten of your friends you can get a coupon for a free Whopper.

Here is how Burger King describes it:

What would you do for a free WHOPPER®? Would you insult an elected official? Would you do a naked handstand? Would you go so far as to turn your back on friendship? Install WHOPPER® Sacrifice on your Facebook profile and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled WHOPPER® Sandwich when you sacrifice 10 of your friends.

It’s meant to make people think about what the value of a Whopper is to them.

There is a lot I like about this campaign:

• The tone of it is right in line with the rest of the creative that BK is pushing out right now
• The fact that a lot of people are participating reinforces that a Whopper has value to this demographic
• BK takes advantage of the discrepancy between the real value and perceived value of the word “friends”…you wouldn’t stop talking to real friends for a hamburger but Facebook allows BK to make this claim with a degree of validity
• The company is relinquishing some control and letting their stakeholders police “the Wall,” which is resulting in as many people defending the brand than there are people criticizing it

I haven’t eaten at Burger King more than two or three times in the past ten years but, aside from the health concerns, I know I do like Whoppers.  I’m a tough conversion for this campaign but it has made me think about the call to action.  Are there ten fringe friends of mine on Facebook that I wouldn’t mind deleting for a coupon for what is essentially a free lunch?   Maybe some people from third grade that I’m not really friends with.  I’m not going to do it by Burger King is making me think about it, which is a win by itself.

This raises another question about the value of “friends” on social networks but that is a topic for another blog post.  I’m going to lunch.