My All-Time Favorite New Media Campaign

The best new Facebook application I've seen in a long time was put to rest this past week.

The campaign was brilliant in its simplicity. Instead of Facebook applications' usual MO of "sign up and send it to as many friends as you want/can," the Whopper Sacrifice went the other direction. It urged people to delete friends in exchange for a free Whopper. Every Facebook user who deleted ten friends from their friends list was given a free Whopper.


The caption at the bottom of the Whopper Sacrifice page now reads that "your love for the Whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships." Assuming ten ex-friends per person, that means that over twenty-three thousand people took part in the Whopper Sacrifice. In addition to the 23,000 active participants there were a LOT of press mentions of the program. Newspapers, magazines, online sources, television...everybody was talking about the Whopper Sacrifice.

And whose brain child was this? Not surprisingly, it was the work of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I can't begin to tell you how much I admire some of the work that CPB does. If they were to call me and offer me a job in their Boulder office, I would have to think long and hard about moving back to Colorado just to have the opportunity to work in a shop of their caliber. Nothing against any agency I've ever worked with, but CPB is working on a whole different level than everybody else.

CPB has been handling the Burger King account for a while and their offbeat approach is working well for Burger King, who have long been notorious for their bipolar advertising efforts. Radical changes every couple of years...campaigns that were as boring as they were ineffective.

I think you are going to see a lot of people mimicking the Whopper Sacrifice app. Whopper Sacrifice helped change the way people think about advertising on Facebook. Instead of spending money on the little ads, put a little money into a unique application. Make it fun, make it funny, and the people will follow.

Hats off, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.