Whopper Sacrifice (Week 9)

Burger King Cancels Facebook Ad Campaign
January 15, 2009
Andrew LaVallee

Burger King Holdings, Inc. released a new ad campaign on January 5 through Facebook. Burger King is known for its advertising shenanigans, and this particular one didn't fall short of expectations.

The campaign entitled "Whopper Sacrifice" was asking Facebook members to "de-friend" 10 people in their friend list in exchange for a coupon for a free Whopper. The campaign featured tag lines such as "Friendship is strong, but the Whopper is stronger.” Every friendship that was terminated was posted on both Facebook walls--the person who de-friended and the person who was de-friended.

“We encourage creativity from developers and companies” using the site, a Facebook spokesman said in a statement, “but we also must ensure that applications meet users’ expectations.” The de-friending announcements posted on both people's walls were against Facebook's protocol.

Facebook was willing to discuss making changes to the ad campaign and allowing it still to be on the site. “While Facebook was a great sport, they did ask for changes that would have resulted in a different approach to our application, counter to what we developed,” a Burger King spokeswoman said in a statement.

Burger King decided not to make changes, and instead, they pulled the entire campaign. A Burger King Web site, Whoppersacrifice.com, says, “Facebook has disabled Whopper Sacrifice after your love for the Whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.”

No need to worry if you participated in this campaign; if you submitted your mailing address before the Facebook application was disabled, you still qualify for a free Whopper.

I saw this campaign and thought it was awesome. However, I was unwilling to participate because I didn't want to hurt the feeling of the 10 people I would de-friend. I have plenty of friends who I don't even know but still I couldn't bring myself to exchange them for a Whopper . . . maybe for a McFlurry and fries, but not a Whopper.