The labyrinthine world of social networking can be confusing for everyone, particularly small-business owners trying to figure out how platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter fit into their business plans. If you or your company is already on Facebook, chances are your account is already cluttered with “friends” you may not even know, or with PR reps who want to keep visible. If you can think of 10 of them you want to remove, Burger King will give you a Whopper, for free. Careful with that ax, Eugene …
This week, fast-food giant Burger King released a Facebook application that gives you a free Whopper burger for every 10 friends you delete. On the Web site Whopper Sacrifice, Burger King keeps a tally that records the number of friends who have been sacrificed for the company’s signature sandwich offering.
After you ax a friend, a message will show up on the activity feed of your Facebook profile telling others that you have sacrificed a friend for a free Whopper. With the app, there’s no way to remove friends without it being posted, so forget about dumping friends on the sly while you claim your free burger. The promotion is also limited to one coupon per account, so don’t go thinking you can “sacrifice” your entire tech department and eat for a week (though that may be a tempting thought). At the time of this article’s publication, 54,563 friends have been deemed less important than a mouthful of bread, meat and vegetables.
AdWeek reports that Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which designed the campaign, thought up the idea after realizing they all faced the same issue: dealing with too many Facebook friends whom they might never have even met. “It’s asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the Whopper,” Crispin Executive Interactive Creative Director Jeff Benjamin told AdWeek.
Let the massacre begin.