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Now here's an interesting approach to social media marketing. Burger King has a new campaign going, which requires interested consumers to install a Facebook App, and then to delete ten of their friends in exchange for a voucher for a free Whopper sandwich.

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.