Whopper Freakout Shows Burger King is King of Viral Marketing

By Li Evans

Who would think that that freaky looking King character could give that red haired, yellow suite wearing clown a run for its money?   Well, if the internet is any reflection of how tides are changing, McDonald's certainly better step up it's game online.

Burger King's latest advertising efforts offline so sweetly coincide online.  It's really fun to see them hit yet another home run far out of the park with their latest efforts.  Have you seen the Whopper Freakout yet?  If you haven't, you certainly should, it'll have you laughing as people truly do freak out about not getting a Whopper.  I also find myself identifying with them, as I'd freak out by someone handing me a Big Mac when I ordered a Whopper inside a Burger King.

You might have caught a commercial or two over the holidays, when the campaign first launched back in December.  Then again if you are an internet marketer, you might not have being the holiday season and swamped with holiday marketing issues! Either way, you need to visit the Whopper Freakout site.  Why?  Because its much more than commercials, it's an actual video piece nearly 8 minutes long showing what happened one day when they not only replaced people's Whoppers with Big Macs and Wendy's hamburgers, but what happened when they told customers they were totally discontinuing the Whopper.

What's even more interesting, is in just one month Whopper Freakout website has close to 9k in inbound links (according to Yahoo!).  1 month, 9k in links, not bad - and they didn't pay for one of those (btw, look at who the top ranking link is), and the domain is less than 6 months old. 

The company that Burger King employs as it's ad company, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is undoubtedly "King of Viral Marketing".  I don't say that merely because of Whopper Freakout, this is just another in a string of "Viral  Hits" Burger King has put out, along with being involved with other viral hits such as the "Truth" campaign.

Over the summer Burger King put out "Simpsonize Me", that helped to make the Simpson's Movie a hit at the box office.  The Simpsonize Me site has over 32k in inbound links - again, mostly viral links.  Then there's "Subservient Chicken", which helped the Chicken Sandwich at Burger King become the #1 selling chicken sandwich in the fast food industry.  That site has over 60k in inbound links - again, mostly viral links.

I have to hand it to the folks at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, they know how to create viral hits.  Burger King had better hope that McDonald's doesn't lure them away!    Until then, I'm going to happily await Burger King's next viral piece, and you my friends can enjoy the Whopper Freakout right here at SMG. :)

BTW doesn't the guy who plays the manager look like that annoying guy from the Capital One commercials - and no I don't mean David Spade! LOL