Chris Sandberg » Social Proof

The Whopper Freakout: Burger King’s Latest Marketing Campaign

csandb — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:27:14 +0000

I am impressed with Burger Kings latest marketing campaign, which combines both Television and the Internet advertising, and includes elements of viral marketing and social proof. Their TV commercial shows a few clips of people’s reaction to being told that the Whopper has been discontinued (the social proof element of the campaign). Then a website URL, http://www.whopperfreakout.com, is displayed. The website just contains a video that is basically just a longer version of the TV commercial, but is entertaining enough that people would enjoy watching it and would likely tell other people about it (the viral element of the campaign). Burger King was smart enough to include embed and email features with the video so the video could be easily shared. The TV commercial was interesting enough to make me want to check out what was on the site, and I am sure many other people did the same. Here is the video shown on the Whopper Freakout website:

By integrating TV advertising and the internet Burger King is hoping to get a lot more out of what they paid for for their TV ad. They are basically using their TV ad to launch a viral internet video campaign. It looks like the campaign just launched a few days ago, so it isn’t really an internet phenomenon yet, but it has potential. Below are the graphs from Technorati, which shows mentions of “Whopper Freakout”, and a traffic data chart from Alexa for the past week.

Mentions of “Whopper Freakout”

There has already been some talk about this campign on the blogosphere. The following are just a few posts on other blogs:

The Whopper Freakout = Genius

Whopper Viral. Iro?

Whopper Freakout really sells.

Whopper freakout

Death of the Whopper

Using Social Proof as a Marketing Tool

csandb — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:39:26 +0000

I went to a Jazz game a couple nights ago with a good friend. We had some great seats on the fifth row (I was within spitting distance of Kevin Garnett.), and the Jazz won 106-91! One thing that caught my attention that had nothing to do with the game was the way Albertsons used social proof as a marketing tool. During one of the time outs the announcer told the audience that some prize was to be given to one individual who had their Albertsons card with them (By the way, Albertsons could do a lot better with their search marketing. I couldn’t find a single page describing their card on Google, let alone the actual official name of the card.) The audience was told to hold out their card so that someone could be chosen. Of course they delayed actually choosing someone for almost a minute as hundreds of fans frantically waved around thier Albertsons card hoping they would be chosen, while non-card holders couldn’t help but noticed how many people already had a card and wondered how they missed the boat. It was kind of like Albertsons was saying “Look all these people that use our card and shop at our stores. You should get a card and shop at Albertsons too so you can be cool like everyone else.”

Social proof can be a powerful marketing tool. If you can get your customers to vouch for your product (or at least make it look like they are) and find a way to advertise it to your potential customers your job as a marketer becomes a lot easier. People don’t want to feel left out and often look to others when making decisions they are unsure of. By being aware of social proof and taking actions to leverage it you can be there when people are looking around to others when trying make a purchase decision.