The now defunct Burger King application, Whopper Sacrifice, that rewarded Facebook users with an actual free sandwich if they deleted ten of their virtual Facebook “friends” gave me warm fuzzies about the brand.
My roommate, who had Facebook in college, has 824 friends. I only have 286. I don’t have any problem removing friends and saying no to friend requests – why should John Buckwald from high school, who I have never spoken to in my entire life, see my pictures and personal information? So when Burger King gave everyone a chance to get rid of some friends, I was gung-ho. Although I didn’t actually get a chance to use the application before it was removed, the buzz about it gave me a new love for Burger King. So much so, that I bought a Whopper this weekend. No coupons needed here!
I enjoyed the application because I think people take social networking too seriously. Kids “poke” someone on Facebook, and it really means something to them offline. When interactions online mean something offline, de-friending someone is an insult. I loved the Whopper Sacrifice for its cutthroat nature. Burger King tapped into the most sensitive area within social media: friendship. While gen y-ers want more and more friends and gen x-ers want more and more business connections, some of us end up with more than we can handle. We’re overwhelmed with status updates, birthday updates, profile updates… the list goes on. Burger King allowed us to trim our friends in a fun way.
While most of the time media and marketing people think of success in purely additive terms, in the case of the Whopper Sacrifice, limiting scale and reach actually provoked a positive brand feeling. That's counter to what most marketers think, which is why it’s interesting. Smaller social networks on Facebook increase the likelihood that users can see what’s on their friends’ profiles – who has the time to look at 824 profiles? Thus, in the case of a branded application a smaller number of friends provides a smaller quantity of users, but also translates to a greater likelihood of quality brand interaction. An additional twist to the Whopper Sacrifice was that someone who received a note that they’d been dropped for a burger may have decided to do the same, thus extending reach.
As marketers know, if you can make that online to offline energy translate to your brand, you’re golden. Let me reiterate again here, that I did in fact purchase a Whopper as a result of the Whopper Sacrifice. While Facebook has all sorts of user-to-user engagement, there has yet to be a compelling advertising model. More needs to be done to keep social networks viable and profitable as advertising platforms (see what agency trendsetters are saying here). In the meantime applications seem to be the way to go.
