social media

You are currently browsing the archive for the social media category.

Burger King’s Angry Whopper & Facebook Debauchery

January 11, 2009 in Alternative Advertising, Commercials, Funny, Interactive, International, Online Advertising, social media | Comments closed

Last May Burger King started selling a new item called the ‘Angry Whopper’ in most of their European fast-food locations. The new menu item was received fairly well by the general public which meant that it was only a matter of time before it crossed over to North America. Well fast-food fans, your wait is over because the ‘Angry Whopper’ can now be found at all US Burger King locations starting this month.

Angry_Whopper.jpg

So now what is an Angry Whopper? Well, it’s a regular Whopper but with spicy onions, jalapeños, pepper jack cheese, bacon , tomatoes, lettuce, mayonnaise and a spicy “Angry Sauce.” Tasty. Anyhow, the spot featured above takes on the typical Crispin Porter + Bogusky pattern of using humor to help sell burgers, in this case showing us why the onions used in the Angry Whopper are so spicy.

angry-gram.jpg

As part of their initial campaign for the European release, Burger King created a micro-site where you can fill out an “Angry-Gram” to send to people who annoy you (in order to let them know just how annoying you think they are), it can be found over at www.angry-gram.com. They also have been airing a few spots to support the campaign in various countries. The most interesting that I’ve come across air in the UK and in Germany. The German one is quiet….umm….’interesting.’

Burger King – Angry Whopper (UK):

Burger King – Angry Whopper (Germany):

As for the more recent US launch, Burger King has just released a Facebook application called the Whopper Sacrifice. Basically what they promise is a coupon for a free Whopper if you ‘unfriend’ 10 of your current Facebook buddies. What’s the catch? This application will have to inform each of those unlucky victims that you have unfriended them in order for you to complete the offer and receive your coupon. Not only that but it adds a little salt to the wound by letting them know that it was all because you would rather have a free Whopper than them as a friend – What a brilliant idea! It combines word-of-mouth marketing with social media in a way that encourages users to spread the application across their online communities. It’ll be interesting to see the analytics on how well this application does in a month or so… i’ll post the results once I receive them. According to their website (at 10:05AM EST on 1/11/09), 158341 “Friends” have already been sacrificed for the sake of free food. It would also be interesting to see how many of those friends were immediately re-added after the coupon was delivered and how many remain friendless.

Burger King has also purchased advertising on the Google Search Network for Angry Whopper related terms:

Angry_Whopper_GoogleAds.jpg

Quiet an expansive campaign for a new burger…

Thanks to So Good Blog for the info on the EU release

Tags: , , , , , ,

iList Launches First Social Classifieds Service

October 22, 2008 in Alternative Advertising, Interactive, Online Advertising, addicted to 1's and 0's, social media | 2 comments

iList launches Craiglist competitor

Meet iList. Launching today out of their über-secret ’stealth mode,’ this new online classifieds service hopes to give Craigslist a much needed run for their money. The whole angle that 25 year old CEO Chris Abad hopes to monopolize on is the ability to integrate listings with popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Pownce and even on rival Craigslist. Upon first signing up on the site you’re asked to verify your phone number in exchange for ‘Karma Points.’ These Karma Points are part of a rewards system that will eventually be linked to redeemable prizes. Every time that you post an item or help promote someone else’s you are rewarded these points. How you help promote offers is by linking up your arsenal of social-networking sites to your iList account and then ‘pushing’ the listing through your own network. This is done through their integrated applications available on each of the networks.

Another selling point for iList is the promise of less fraudulent activity. Craigslist is notorious for being a den of scammers and spammers. Hoping that regular Craiglist users would be open to shedding their view of anonymity, an iList account is linked to your social identity. So if someone scams you, they probably have either fake profiles or you’ll be able to track them down.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

AMC Has Twitter Suspend Mad Men Accounts

August 26, 2008 in Branding, Celebrity, Guerilla, Interactive, Marketing With A Twist, PR Nightmares, social media | 5 comments

Twitter and Madmen Equal Fail

Twitter is buzzing with the news that last night the Twitter accounts for Mad Men characters Don Draper (@don_draper) and Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) were taken down. At first the outrage was pointed towards the folks over at Twitter, with reports stating that it was because these accounts fall under their new spam restrictions – The accounts were not real people saying real things (yet all were promoting a similar product).

Twitter employees fired back that it wasn’t their initiative, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice issued by AMC. Apparently these twitter accounts were NOT all part of a marketing campaign for the show! I will say this, each of the accounts (there’s more than just Don and Peggy on Twitter) seems to have stuck to the character they were portraying. While AMC has the legal right to protect their brand, why ruin a good campaign? Especially one that is free?

Ben Kessler found the rest of the cast who had Twitter accounts and posted them on his blog. They are:

  • Don Draper
  • Peggy Olson
  • Roger Sterling
  • Pete Campbell
  • Joan Holloway
  • Paul Kinsey
  • Sal Romano
  • Bertram Cooper
  • Bobble Barrett

    • and

  • Peggy_Olson?

    • – Apparently a new Peggy Olson account has been created, this time with an underscore in her name. One of her first ‘tweets’ was in regards to the account suspension:

    Peggy_Olson Mad Men Twitter Response

    MG Siegler from VentureBeat was the first to report of the DMCA takedown:

    Twitter has responded back to me on the issue. Apparently it wasn’t a spam issue at all, but rather a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice that Twitter’s support team responded to, co-founder Biz Stone tells me. I guess AMC didn’t like others playing the roll of its Mad Men characters besides the actors who play them on TV.

    I wonder if this was the inspiration for the influx of fake Mad Men accounts (taken from SomeEcards.com):
    mad men greeting card

    I don’t think this is the end of this story….

    UPDATE! Mario Parisé from the StrategicText blog has come forward to reveal that he has been twittering under the Paul Kinsey (@paul_kinsey) account. It is still (as of 12:45pm EST) online. He’s got a great post about it over on his site. Go check it out.

    Tags: , , , ,

    12345