Burger King’s Perfect Marketing Mix

Not all burger joints are created equal.  Competition is at an all time high, while chains are working as hard as they can to undercut one another.  Taco Bell has taken to price with menu items starting below $0.75, McDonalds has trying expanding its offerings to coffee products, and Burger King, well they have upped the game with a series of smart marketing campaigns aimed at their target audience.  No doubt they have Crispin Porter & Bogusky to thank for a lot of it, but let’s take a look at three campaigns that stand out, not only on merit alone, but for their ability to use social media to generate a buzz.

Burger Colonge – Oops sorry, body spray.  Burger King released “Flame” body spray just before Christmas of 2008 to much fanfare.  It created so much fanfare that it was sold out instantly and generated a buzz beyond just burger sales.  Flame was a body spray with a hint of “America’s Favorite Flame Broiled Burger.”  Really, burger scented body spray?  Isn’t that what you wash off?  Well the internet when booming and virtually every news show included a spot on Flame, the Burger King body spray.  Ebay auctions were selling a bottle of the stuff that retailed for $7 for $25+.  Now we can’t attribute earnings to body spray, but just so you know, BKC posted phenomenal earnings Q4 ’08, when the market was at its worst.

Whopper Sacrifice – This was undoubtedly one of the best campaigns we’ve seen leveraging Facebook.  Leveraging the often lose definition of a “friend” in social networking, the Whopper Sacrifice application allowed users of the popular site to de-friend 10 friends in exchange for a free Whopper.  The site claims that the free Whopper deal was strong enough to break 233,906 friendships.  Of course the notion that you could get rid of 10 random stalkers for a free sandwich was just too enticing for the media not to pick up on… and every social media site on the internet.

Whopper Freakout – Undoubtedly one of the best marketing campaigns we have ever seen that does justice to the point… it creates demand and reaffirms any demand that wasn’t already there.  The Whopper Freakout was a documentary style video that showed what would happen if the Whopper, the cornerstone of the BK menu, was taken off of the menu.  Well, watch the video and you get the point.  It was well watched and circulated both offline and online making it the winner of the Grand Effie.

The nature of all of these campaigns combines three critical elements: all have their own website, all use a combination of online and offline marketing, and all have viral elements to them.  There is a lot that can be learned from BK’s progressive promotion, but even more territory that they have left uncharted in social media.