"You've been sacrificed for a whopper." How would you like to read a similar message to that from a 'used-to-be' friend on Facebook? Thousands of people did.
Last week Burger King launched an application on Facebook that allowed you to get a free Whopper if you deleted 10 of your friends. And contrary to how Facebook usually works, people would receive "deletion notices" complete with why they were being deleted.
It seems that Burger King didn't mean harm to anyone's actual friends. When looking at what their application said, they actually encouraged you to become friends with a stranger just so you could delete them. They even had a sample message for you to use when requesting a friend that read:
"Sup fool. I would like to create a false pretense of a a misrepresented friendship, in order to take advantage of it, along with Burger King, to reap rewards for myself, and enjoy a delicious burger, all with the comfort of never feeling guilty for sacrificing a friend that I actually care for."
They also had an actual website that you could visit, Whopper Sacrifice. From that site you could send an "angry-gram" to someone who deleted you. They were just trying to have fun and joke around with this new marketing concept.
So what was Facebook's problem then? Some people were probably deleting "real" friends without letting them know what was going on. And with all the notifications of deletion, Facebook didn't seem to be enjoying it.
Burger King is known for their edgy advertising and marketing ideas. They get the public's attention by pushing the envelope, and it definitely worked this time. Everyone is talking about this app. But Facebook did have them disable it Thursday because they claimed it was in violation of their privacy policy. Facebook does encourage creativity with their applications, but the deletion notifications might have been "too creative" for them.
Ultimately, the Whopper Sacrifice, was "sacrificed", as they put it. It went along well with the rest of their campaign and had a large impact, but it didn't survive as long as they were hoping.Burger King used Social Media to their advantage. They came up with a very intriguing idea and put it into action. Social Media is usually used as a relational tool, but they were able to turn it around and make people "un-relational" just for a free whopper.
~Connie Jo
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Curious enough, my co-workers and I had a major conversation about this marketing strategy. How would we feel if we were 'sacrificed', would we do it to a friend ourselves, is this an edgy marketing campaign or just stupid? It was quite the conversation, so perhaps B.K. accomplished their goal if it was to get their brand front and center.
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