The Burger King case: How Burger King’s ‘Whopper Sacrifice’ campaign was sacrificed by Facebook

This blog post is about Burger Kings misuse of the social technology platform ‘Facebook’ to market one its sales promotions.

 

Burger King is a global fast food chain restaurant known for producing hamburgers. It was established in the mid twentieth century and it currently has over 13,000 outlets in 79 countries with total sales revenue of about $2 Billion USD.

The sales promo was titled ‘TheWhopper Sacrifice’ which requests that facebook users delete ten people from their friends list to get a coupon for a free hamburger Whopper. To make matters worse Burger King sends out messages to delisted friends that they were worth less than one-tenth of a Whopper hamburger.

Within six days after this application for the whopper sacrifice was released, the application was installed more than 60,000 times and over 200,000 facebook friends were deleted. This led to even more unethical behavior by facebook users who created unofficial groups, offering to let other members add them as friends and then delete them for purpose of getting a free Whopper.

Facebook disabled the campaign after ten days, pointing out that it violated users privacy because the Whopper sacrifice application informed friends if they had been deleted. Facebook states that it challenged the very concept of Facebook. Some people complained about the rude message from Burger king which stated that they are worth less than one tenth of a Whopper hamburger. The following was the statement released by Facebook;

“We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users’ expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions. In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained.”

Considering Rogerson’s 8 Ethical principles, it can be seen that The Whopper Sacrifice campaign violates most of the ethical principles. The first ethical principle - honor - was violated because the application created a disapproving reaction from those that got the delisting message. It violates the second ethical principle by implicitly breaking friendship trust amongst friends. Considering the third ethical principle it can be seen that Burger King did not properly consider Facebook’s policy as regards removing friends from friend’s list – Facebook regards this as a bridge of privacy because normally when people delist people from their friend list Facebook does not inform the affected person. In regards to the fairness ethical principle, it can be seen that all stakeholder’s views was not considered with regards to the action.

The consequence was the ban of the campaign by Facebook. But much worse is the tension that it must have created amongst friends. This impact cannot be measure, but friends will have it at the back of their mind that why would you pick them for the delisting amongst your over 100 friends.

In the future, Burger King should put other stakeholders into consideration before launching an offensive social marketing campaign such as the whopper sacrifice. If possible they should consult with all the key stakeholders that will be affected either directly or indirectly. Rogerson’s 8 ethical principles will also come in handy to help prepare for future social media campaigns.

  

Do you find the sacrifice campaign that was rather sacrificed by Facebook to be interesting and eye opening? Share your thoughts and ideas below in the comment area.

References

Rogerson, S., & Fidler, C. (n.d.). A practical perspective on information ethics. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/322961/A_Practical_Perspective_of_Information_Ethics

Dawson, R., Hough, J., Hill, J., Winterford, B., & Alexandrov, D. (2008). Implementing enterprise 2.0. San Francisco; Sydney: Advanced Human Technologies.

The Ford Fiesta Social Media Campaign ROI

The goal of today’s blog post is to look at the return on investment on Social Technology implementation made by a multi-national car company known as Ford Motors. Ford motor company is thethird largest car manufacturer in the world, established in first decade of the twentieth century. Sales volume of this global car behemoth runs into the hundreds of billions of United States Dollars.

In 2009, Ford motor companylaunched a new social media campaign for its new ford fiesta car. The experiment was to last for six months, promoting the new car to a younger age group between their 20’s and 30’s through social media, by using 100 people who are key players in the online social arena with massive followings.

Ford handed over 100 ford fiesta cars to these 100 drivers with six months of all expenses paid for the use of the new car by ford motors. In exchange for this, ford request that these selected drivers use social media platforms to share their ford fiesta experience with friends and followers. This people were expected to blog, tweet, and post photos to Flickr and make YouTube videos, all of which would move organically through their social networks.  

The Key Objectives of launching the social media campaign are:

·         To reach millennials who were difficult to engage

·         Start a national conversation about ford for a new generation

·         Work with contemporary culture instead of against it

·         Generate US sales for a style that had previously only been successful overseas

Key Issues with this social media campaign:

·         How to market to millennials

·         No models in showrooms

·         Control over what agents say about the cars

·         How to measure performance

Cost of Social Media Campaign

The project was launched by providing 100 fiesta cars to hundred agents that are socially savvy bloggers. The company hired a social media marketing firm to help manage its campaign. And also incurred cost on maintenance of the vehicles within the project duration. The 100 Ford fiesta cars were estimated at $2million including the infrastructure provided. The program lasted for about six months which cost an average of $500,000 per month to maintain. This results in an approximate total cost of $5million.

 

ROI Calculation

ROI = {(Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment} X 100%

ROI = {($30million - $5million) / $5million} X100%

ROI = 500%

Six days after the Ford fiesta car was launched, it grossed sales of over 10,000 cars which is approximately $150 million in sales revenue.

It is assumed that the net profit on each ford fiesta car is $3,000 which approximates to $30million for 10,000 ford fiesta cars. While the payback period for the project was approximately six months. 

Benefits

Running a social media campaign for its ford fiesta car launch has help generate about $25 million monetary benefit with six months of the campaign. This has also helped the car company improve its customer engagement effort and created sales leads for the car brand as a whole.

Tangible benefits

·         Reduced cost of acquiring customer insights

·         Reduced marketing cost by using the viral power of social technology platforms to drive sales leads

·         Increase in sales beyond standard benchmark for launches through other media channels

Intangible benefits

·         Increased marketing effectiveness. For example, 6.5million views on youtube within the campaign period

·         Increased collaboration with its customers on how to serve them better

·         Increase in innovation based on customer insight

·         Codified knowledge gained through successful social media campaign

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths

•    the campaign helped ford motors generate sales of more than 10,000 cars within six days of launching the ford fiesta car
•      the cost of marketing to generate that same number of sales was far less than that of traditional media channels.

Weaknesses

•      The data provided based on the number of youtube video views of 6.5 million cannot be directly linked to the sales generated.
•        The cost of executing the campaign is an approximate figure based on the first month data release for the campaign. And the net profit for each ford fiesta is an assumption made.

Conclusion

Social media marketing is a very effective means of collaborating with partners and employees. It provides effective means to engage customers which can often lead to valuable customer insights at a very low cost compared to using other mediums. But the challenge of using social media marketing is that most of the benefits attributed to it are intangible while a small number of the benefits are tangible. As the use of this technology tools reach its critical mass more and more organisations will discover ingenious ways to measure its tangible benefits that can be tied to a monetary return on investment.

What interests you about what you have read on the mouthwatering ROI of the ford fiesta social media campaign? Share your ideas and thoughts below in the comment area.

Reference

Newman, A., Thomas, J., & Ebrary. (2009). Enterprise 2.0 implementation. New York: McGraw-Hill.

The ASOS Case Study: Social Media Marketing Excellence

ASOS is an online fashion retailer operating in the United Kingdom. It has become the number one destination for millions of young adults in their twenties. The company has enjoyed strong sales growth year on year since it was established in 2000. ASOSwon the marketing excellence award in the social media category organized by the marketing society. 

 

This blog post will examine how ASOS has leveraged the McKinsey Value Levers using social technology tools to achieve its corporate goals and objectives. It has developed its social media strategy around three ambitious objectives: boost sales, deepen brand engagement and encourage advocacy. A huge percentage of its client-base are females in their twenties. Based on this, ASOS key insight inspired the development of an interactive social media strategy – which focuses on the significance of dressing up its age twenty –something female clients when getting prepared for a party. This has led to a significant growth in engagement levels and sales for ASOS.

 

ASOS use influencers to bolster its social marketing effort by inspiring organic brand advocacy among its most ardent customers. During ASOS’s first experiment on using influencers for its social marketing, it recruited about 769 active brand advocates that are high-reach, high-value customers from among 3,000 applicants to the program. Within 3 months, the effort generated more than 7,500 positive brand mentions that reached more than 12 million people within these influencers’ networks. All these led to a 600% rise in spontaneous quotes and 800% growth in website traffic referral. It can been seen that ASOS as successfully used McKinseyvalue Levers six and ten – generate and foster sales leads and use social technology to match talent to tasks.

By gaining customer insights from its social media efforts, ASOS decided to create specific social activations designed based on insights gained from customer behavior. It created a theme called ‘best night ever’ which has three key social activations on the most popular social technology platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube and Instagram. These three social activations are; Win Your ‘Best Night Ever’, Be Inspired for Your ‘Best Night Ever’ and Celebrate Your ‘Best Night Ever’. The celebrity videos created within these social activations generated over one million views within the first two weeks. The twitter hashtag for the ‘Best Night Ever’ has the most used hashtag across the campaign period versus competitors’ brand names and hashtags- beating TopShop ‘Whosthatgirl’ hashtag. In addition, ASOS organize games on twitter to engage its customers and generate sales. Its denim pair’s game on Twitter has led to increase in hourly sales of 774% during the gaming periods. The latest game had an eight fold impact on the direct sales generated from Twitter for its duration. The development of this social activations and games has led to ASOS deriving customer insights and also generating and fostering sales leads – which are Mckinsey Value levers four and six.

Late last year, the company took its social marketing strategy a step further by launching its UK sales full-price Christmas party wear collection and promotional sales to clear stock, using the power of social commerce to its full advantage. While retail giants such as Walmart and Tesco have left their Google+ account, ASOS is taking full advantage of every opportunity at its disposal by posting one or two updates every day and uses unique content rather than repurposing its old updates. Based on its consistent use of social technology platforms, ASOS has been able to generate over 7,500 pieces of content and 200 blog posts. This shows ASOS’s use of the McKinsey value levers five and seven – use social technologies for marketing communication and social commerce.

ASOS is a true inspiration for retailers online that aspire to use social technology tools to achieve their corporate objectives. The McKinsey Value Levers identified above are just a few of the value levers used by ASOS to execute its enterprise 2.0 strategy.

What fascinates you about what you have read on the social brilliance of ASOS? Share your ideas and thoughts below in the comment area.

Reference

          McKinsey (2013). The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies.