Burger King (Norway) Gives Away BigMacs to test the Loyalty of their Fans!
Burger King has attempted a coup of sorts.. Their Norway operations decided that they wanted to identify and engage with their true fans who would not trade their whoppers for anything.
They decided to test the loyalty of their facebook fans (~ 38000 of them). All their fans on Facebook got an offer, the “Whopper Sellout”:
Burger King gave their fans an option to get a free “BIG Mac” (a product of McDonald’s, their biggest competitor) and get banned for life on their fan page or to stay a fan and join the new facebook page for the true fan.
They sent out 50$ vouchers to all those who opted to get the free BigMac. They also sent along a letter thanking and informing them that they are forever banned from the BK fan pages. They seem to have lost about 30000 fans on their page leaving about 8000 true fans..
Watch this short video that tells the entire story:
This experiment is important in a couple of ways:
- Not everyone who likes your facebook page or ReTweets your tweets is not a fan or loyal customer.
- Marketers are now realizing that just having a huge number of fan following them on social media alone is not a good metric to aim for.
- Marketers and brands are maturing in how they use social media and the changes in the metrics being aimed for.
What needs to be seen is if this is considered to be a great marketing ploy or a tactical blunder!
In my opinion, this was a great move by BK. This campaign did them well in the following dimensions:
- They have connected with their “TRUE Fans”, which means that the level of engagement will significantly improve.
- This entire campaign was also tongue-in-cheek and hence was able to garner a lot of free publicity (like me writing this blog ;-))
- Sending the letter along with the vouchers could potentially be a great idea. No one likes to be told that they are banned from a site for life.
By running this experiment, have they opened a pandora’s box? Will other brands follow suit?
Or will this be relegated to be an interesting experiment in the social media space.
We will get to know soon enough.. What do you think about this? Share your thoughts by commenting on the blog..
Mukesh, thanks for bringingup this case, which I followed with great interest when it happened earlier this year. BK definitely achieved a few of the things you mention, but I also think that BK (such as other companies) created the situation with many non-fans themselves. Companies were/are initially very busy getting people to like their pages in return for a chance to win something (or some other marketing stunt). This gave them a lot of likes but companies should not have made the conclusion that like = fan.
The situation reminds me a of the one of email marketing. Companies used to be busy getting as many (opt in) emailaddresses as possible – later realizing that it didn’t lead to good results unless people actually wanted to be connected with the brand. Data clean up has become a standard process in most companies when it comes to for example email (and other contact details) and I believe the same will happen to social media likes, followers etc.
On a side note, the voucher was not $50 (burgers are expensive in Norway but not that expensive) but NOK 50….and BK put the limit at 1000 burgers…..so all in all the campaign (in terms of Big Macs) cost them NOK 50,000 (or roughly $8,000)…..not bad for lots of publicity 😉
Have a great weekend
Hi Kristian
Thanks a lot for catching something that i missed in the story.
You are absolutely right when you mention that this plight (non-engaged fans) is self-inflicted. Most brands are guilty of this mistake than we would like.
At least, BK (Norway) had the sense to try and correct the situation. Not many brands even do that.
I only hope that brands and marketers realize this sooner than later that just going after number of fans/likes/RT’s doesn’t help in the long run, only creates a bigger problem of engagement.
Regards
Mukesh