A featured story on Advertising Age showed how Burger King, for example, tries to cater to the
anxieties and desires of the creative consumer market. Like their slogan “Have It Your Way”,
Burger King encourages everyone to create videos about Burger King their way for video iPod. In
cooperation with Heavy.com, a youth-focused broadband video site that features a heavy dose of
user-created content, it gives freedom to everyone to create a video using a Burger King mask.
Heavy.com sent out 25 masks to the site’s frequent contributors and received a dozen videos in
return.
The most phenomenal video is the one that shows a woman doing a striptease. The woman
performing seducing acts in the video suddenly changes into a man wearing a King mask. Can
you imagine? Burger King icon was used for striptease viral video. Is this initiative a bad PR for
Burger King?
Not really. The racy video has invited over 4.1 million downloads by Heavy.com users, which
mostly are males ages 18 to 34, the sweet spot of Burger King’s marketing target. The initiatives turn up to be a good “advertising” and “PR” for Burger King. Advertising Age even dubbed Burger King as the “King” of marketing communication.
Consider also the LEGO case. The company enlists influential consumers as online evangelists.
Following the launch of its new locomotive kit which was shown to 250 LEGO train fans, their
word-of-mouth helped the first 10,000 unit sell out in 10 days with no other marketing.