Whopper Sacrifice: Burger King Strikes Again, This Time on Facebook

It looks as if Burger King had a hat trick under their belt the whole time. They have recently launched a Facebook application called "Whopper Sacrifice". A genius little application that allows you to sacrifice 10 of your current Facebook friends for a coupon for a free Whopper.

They've recently made large impacts online and in traditional media with their Whopper Virgins campaign and the Flame Cologne they introduced that turned out to be an actual product that smelled like a flame broiled burger. Yummy!

Why do I like this? It's simple, it actually offers something but not for nothing, and it's so completely different from any Facebook application out there, that it's going to get some attention.

So it's a simple of a concept to understand. Believe me, this is where a lot of things go wrong. If the consumer doesn't "get it" extremely quick, they're gone. This is focused at Facebook users and anyone that uses Facebook knows the concept of "friends". The interface is also easy, just scroll through your friends in the application and burn them each one by one!

It actually offers something, but not for nothing. The Facebookers are weary and suspicious of the marketing speak for "free" anything. If you start your interaction with that consumer in that way...you're going to lose them. However, this isn't free. You actually have to give Burger King something in return. Brilliant! The walls come down and you have they're attention. This and most of this crowd has at least 10 friends that they could burn. I've personally been wanting to clean the closets out long ago.

It's a different experience. Yes it's a Facebook application and I agree that I've had the feeling that they were useless soon after "Pirates vs Ninjas", but this one's worth another look. This is a different concept for the application, it's not really asking for you to try to keep up w/ anything, it serves it's purpose and it's done. You get your Whopper and Burger King gets your eyeballs on their logo for a pretty good amount of time while you scroll through your friends, deciding which ones that you really just friended them to see if they were still hot after highschool.

So, I've been impressed with Burger King's interactive projects since subserviant chicken and they keep impressing me. I just don't understand how other highly brand oriented consumer products haven't caught the clue yet. Find a better agency folks!

Marlboro Lights up Spring Break

It really doesn't get much better than this in the world of non-traditional, subliminal, guerrilla marketing now does it?
I found this at jaffejuice, if he's not on your reader than he needs to be.
I love these marketing ideas. The narrator on the video is wrong. This is not taking advantage of kids at spring break. I seriously doubt it was intended to subliminally get drunken travelers to go buy a pack of smokes (ok maybe it was). However,It doesn't need to work like that, it only needs to be a good story. Just one student shaking their head on the dance floor notices this and it spreads like wildfire through the club, and once it's found it will be a tale that frat boys and coeds from all over will be singing when they get back on campus. It will be shared, and that's a win for anyone.
Of course the guy speaking on the video is full of it when he's speaking about the legal aspects of the lighting trick. I really don't see anyting illegal, but you tell me.