ORIGINAL ARTICLE: If you listen close enough you can probably hear the arteries of hundreds of Japanese people clogging as Burger King has unveiled the Windows 7 Whopper.

What is a Windows 7 Whopper you ask?

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Well, it’s just like the ordinary Whopper… only with 7 patties of meat and stands over 5 inches tall. As far as the price goes, the Windows 7 Whopper will set you back ¥777, which translates to about $8.55, which isn’t that bad when you think about the quantity meat you’re getting.

Only the first 30 customers per day can take advantage of the special ¥777 pricing, each patron after that will have to pay ¥1,450, which is about $17.10. For those interested, the promotion runs from 10/22 – 10/28.

Would you attempt to eat a Windows 7 Whopper? Let us know.

Caring and Sharing

What if your ad was so engaging, a viewer wanted to share it with a friend? Sure, 9 ads out of 10 aren’t that engaging to most people, but that’s on your creative department. Let’s say for sake of argument, you have accomplished putting together a great ad that viewers actually enjoy. Why not give them an opportunity to easily pass it along.

Harry Gold with ClickZ has a great article suggesting the use of chiclets in your banner ads. Chiclets are the little social icons you often see attached to web content that let people share said content via social networks, bookmarking services, etc.

It’s simply adding a viral marketing touch to an otherwise stationary banner campaign. You’re giving your ad wheels. By adding these chiclets, you’re all of a sudden opening up your ads to all of the major social networks without spending an extra dime.

Blurring the Lines

The challenging part is coming up with an ad that is enticing enough for people to want to share. Gold notes that the lines between social media and online media are blurring, and he’s very right about that. Wouldn’t an effective ad blur the lines as well?

Take a look at this Pepsi ad discussed at ReelSEO. "Banner ads are now no longer just uni-directional, it would seem," says ReelSEO’s Christophor Rick. "A campaign being run by Pepsi called ‘Dear Mr. President’ is allowing people to record a video message straight from an embedded banner on a standard website. Empowering consumers to not only interact with the banner but actually create content and push it back to the advertiser, it’s perhaps one of the more innovative uses of online video advertising today."

Look at Burger King’s recent trading-friends-for-Whoppers campaign. It got shut down by Facebook for violating terms of service, but the creativity was there.

Marketers need to look for ways to push the envelope with their campaigns if they want to stand out. And it is the ads that stand out that are the most successful. The social direction the web is going in caters to all kinds of possibilities. Shouldn’t you be considering giving your ads a social touch?

I have to hand it to BK. They’ve had some pretty memorable marketing campaigns in recent memory. Last year they had the commercials where they taped people’s responses when they were told that the Whopper was no longer an option:

They’ve had the whopper virgin campaign:

and the meat-scented cologne campaign:

Now they have the Whopper Sacrifice, the aforementioned trade-your-friends-for-a-hamburger campaign. "You like your friends, but you love the Whopper" is the tagline.

With the increasing and well-publicized popularity of Facebook, this is a pretty smart marketing strategy on Burger King’s part, if in fact Facebook is cool with it.  I am awaiting comment from Facebook representatives on that. Keep in mind that in the past, Facebook has blocked access to people named Yoda, and has recently been a little stricter with apps.

Still, I don’t see what is to stop people from getting their free whopper, then adding their friends back. It’s really just a positive branding experience for Facebook anyway.

It’s the beginning of the year, and we’re already seeing some innovative ways in which companies can use social media as a marketing tool. I wonder what kind of stuff we’re going to have witnessed by 2010.

UPDATE: What do you know, Facebook has yanked the app. It was still an interesting social media marketing idea.

Mentions of “Whopper Freakout”

There has already been some talk about this campign on the blogosphere. The following are just a few posts on other blogs:

The Whopper Freakout = Genius

Whopper Viral. Iro?

Whopper Freakout really sells.

Whopper freakout

Death of the Whopper

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