Don't ask the Subervient Chicken to do something crass... (Click on me to have some fun!)
Viral Marketing-The Burger King Case Study
Do you remember BK’s subservient chicken? In 2004 I giggled along with my suite mate in college as we playing around with this, because we were of course putting in inappropriate things for the chicken to do. (He will pee on the couch, but won’t eat McDonalds or go vegan.)
Why the blast from the past? After one day of this marketing campaign, over 1 million unique visitors had been to Burger Kings website (Wired). It is an interactive website–still available on BK’s website–that is a great example of what a company’s web presence should be: full of little nuggets of content that expand on the brand and engage the user with Burger King’s products. The avian piece of corporately produced “viral” content above is engaging and acts in a memetic way.
The Simpson’s Movie is one of many films (Dark Knight, The Watchman, etc.) that possessed an inherent fan base before its theatrical release. Large online campaigns before the release including websites and video content were therefore wildly successful. Again BK sponsored a unique experience: everyone could “Simpsonize” themselves before the theatrical release. Anyone with a facebook account can remember how profile pictures on whole seemed to have more of a yellowish tinge to them during that time.
BK let you Simpsonize yourself! Not anymore unfortunately 
Finally BK partnered with the creative mind behind Family Guy to sponser “Seth McFarland’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy” which consisted of weekly releases of short videos on youtube. One of the videos Super Mario Rescues The Princess, had been watched over 2.1 million times shortly after its release, and it become the most popular video of the week (tvwire.com). The clips proved to be a viral in nature and had BK advertising elements including billboards with a small 5 second humorous clip of the King. Below is my favorite of the BK sponsored videos:
Burger King is the perfect example of how large companies have began to successfully mimic meme culture to market their products
The Culture Industry Goes Online
The Culture Industry, deemed thusly by the Frankfurt School’s Adorno & Horkheimer, produces standardized units of popular culture that are utilized by companies to keep the masses continually participating in capitalism. While the internet, as Rheingold argues, is a culture of subcultures, the capitalistic interests of the Culture Industry are beginning to adapt to the new environment.
Meme culture provides an organic way to produce cultural units that are interactive, collaborative, and generally begin outside of the traditional Cultural Industry–although they may be heavily referential. When the mainstream media (MSM) gets a hold of these organic memes, they bring them into the cultural industry because they use them to create revenue for the media companies. More importantly companies have began to mimic meme culture in order to get groups to basically participate in capitalism i.e. buy their products and services.
There are many different aspects and reasons why a video goes viral, and as we saw with the Microsoft example in my last post, the viral effect might not be intended. The brand, place of elements in pop culture, shock value, strange or off the wall content, emotional involvement, humor, are all pieces of the puzzle. And we may never be able to identify a formula of how to create the perfect meme or viral piece of culture. For every Burger King there are a plethora of companies who have unsuccessful attempted to create an advertising campaign that mimics memes. But that doesn’t mean that the MSM and companies won’t continue to try.
So at the end of the day, organic memes allow individuals engage with culture outside of a capitalistic model. But, through the mainstream media they can become a part of the culture industry. Companies have been attempting to harness the cultural power online for years through marketing campaigns. But because of the high level of literacy needed to understand and interact with meme culture, the more often than not fail horribly.
Possibly Relevant Posts:
- The Commodification of Memes: Marketing Campaigns and Chuck on Conan (2) | Lauren Marie
- Meme Culture and the Mainstream Media (2) | Lauren Marie
- Are memes spreading too fast online? Or are they expanding cultural creativity? (1) | Lauren Marie
6 Comments
Very interesting. I was surprised to see so many instances where astroturfed memes actually worked–every attempt at corporate memeing I’ve seen has always been a hilarious failure. I think this points to the greater freedom from the culture industry that the internet allows: corporate interests largely fail, unless they can build on something that’s popular within the same group (Simpsonize yourself, the Seth McFarlane videos) or do something really weird (the subservient chicken).
It’s worth pointing out that of those campaigns you had pointed out, I had never heard of the Seth McFarlane videos, and I had no idea the Simpsonize yourself thing was sponsored by Burger King. The branding of the Simpsons got in the way of the Burger King brand for me.
I know the subservient chicken was a really successful online marketing campaign, but I wonder if it drove offline sales of actual BK customers? I’m sure the meme increased BK’s brand awareness (and maybe this was simply the point), but I’d be curious to know if their sales increased as well during the run of this marketing campaign.
Viral marketing is something that has always interested me. It seems interesting that companies would often spend so much money on things that don’t reference their company, or only do so in passing. What is the price of buzz, and how much can it really be worth to a company.
Concerning the Seth McFarlane clips specifically, I wonder what kind of liability Burger King took on in allowing a rather incendiary figure do a line of cartoons for a family food chain. I remember watching some of the clips and being quite shocked that a company like Burger King would sign off on some of the content. Do you think Burger King cared about content, or as it goes, any press is good press?
The subservient chicken definitely increased brand awareness, but also, more importantly in my opinion, awareness of BK’s online presence.
Seth MacFarlane owns the creative and developed the content on his own. Burger King was a sponsor for it’s edited release on youtube and has a channel devoted to the content that MacFarlane developed while they were a sponsor. Priceline.com stepped in as a sponsor when they dropped out. But if you visit Mr. MacFarlane’s website you can find the unedited versions of all of the comedy clips that you can stream while watching advertisements for “Family Guy,” “American Dad,” and Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy DVDs.
BK has no legal liability in terms of these cartoons. The internet isn’t a scarce resource, so there is no FCC to control what content you can produce. Plus, even though BK is “family” restaurant, their online presence is kooky and subversive. In recent years with the Burger King mascot who is borderline creepy, they have been fostering an alternative image in their advertising as hip and young. The content that they sponsor was edited, so in reality is paramount to being an advertiser on FOX during Family Guy, The Cleveland show, or American Dad. And those shows hit the key younger male demographics that fast food chains love to court.
I agree I probably overstated the roll of the corporate presence in the online shorts. I did find it interesting however that BK gave Seth McFarlane creative control over their mascot in the intro to each of the sponsored cartoons, as innocuous as they may have been. I guess I had was thinking what would happen if Ronald McDonald were to appear in a cartoon like those, but that is apples to oranges.
I definitely agree with you that it was a well executed targeted appeal to a demographic that they had courted already.
I think creative failure is the norm in most situations, not just corporate ones. Lauren and I are learning about the cost of failure in our television class with the head of CBS research, David Poltrack. Still the potential revenue of the big hits, makes it necessary for network television to fail constantly. Every minute in this country, a television show dies. The same could be said of Internet memes of all stripes, I’ll wager.
What I love about the meme culture (and I made my own successful failure for Microsoft with the talented artist Vera Brosgol: http://www.enchantedoffice.com) is the very idea of creativity cavorting in such an expansive way with often relatively cheap means of production. The opportunity for creative expression and consumption is mind boggling. Even asking the chicken to fart is creative, wouldn’t you say?