JANUARY 21, 2009

My Facebook Unfriends Feed Me

While scanning one of my favorite marketing blogs, YPulse, I came across a marketing campaign from Burger King and Facebook called the Whopper Sacrifice.  Have you heard of this one yet?  It’s a Facebook application that challenges users to sacrifice ten friends after which they receive a free Whopper.

It makes good marketing sense for the two to partner on a project like this.  It conveniently engages people where they are - online - and gets people to use both companies’ products, which makes them money.  What baffles me, however, is why Facebook would want users to have fewer friends.  If Facebook is trying to promote itself - just as Burger King getting people to enter their stores, eat their food, and most likely spend money on something else while they’re there (have to wash that greasy burger down with something, and, dang, those fries smell good!) - then shouldn’t Facebook be encouraging its users to find and add more friends, connect more and not less?

I’d expect that Facebook asking users to unfriend people would result in failure, not success.  More friends mean more connectivity, which means more activity.  Perhaps the fewer friends ploy signals a shift in the purpose of Facebook, urging people to use it to find and keep only significant relationships. Quality over quantity.  Or, perhaps the ploy is simply that: just a quirky, yet questionable, strategy to get people’s attention.

Nearly a week after Whopper Sacrifice launched, Facebook did ask the developer to disable one functionality of the application - its ability to notify the friend who was being sacrificed for a Whopper via news feed. Facebook claimed this action violated an expectation of privacy since users are not normally notified when someone removes them as a friend. Rather than adjust to this restriction, Burger King and the developer chose to conclude the campaign.

If nothing else, this marketing scheme has certainly piqued my interest, consequently getting me to visit these two websites and get to know the companies better (a step closer to me choosing either of their products).  And if that was their only goal, then I say “Well done!” to both companies. These days, breaking through a saturated marketplace and gaining the attention of consumers is success in and of itself.

What’s your take on the Whopper Sacrifice?