You can keep your friends. Facebook and Burger King stop the Whopper Sacrifice madness
Filed under: Food
You'll have to buy a Whopper the old-fashioned way now, at least until the next gimmick comes along. Burger King and Facebook have shut down the Whopper Sacrifice campaign as of Wednesday, January 15, which invited Facebook users to drop 10 of their friends to get a free Whopper. Facebook claimed "privacy" issues, but since more than 200,000 friends were dropped, you've got to think that had something to do with it.The campaign spread virally, (we wrote about recently), and turned out not to be as cruel as it sounds. Often, people on Facebook will link to another Facebook user who they barely know and later wonder, "Why am I linked up to this guy, and why do I care that he's about to walk his dog? I don't even know him."
And so if you were dropping those friends, it's maybe even a convenience.
However, in Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice campaign, every time you sacrificed a friend for a Whopper, that friend was sent an email, letting them fully understand that they had been dumped in the quest to get a free sandwich. Apparently, the Facebook folks rethought that and asked Burger King to stop sending their snarky emails.
Burger King mulled it over and decided to drop the campaign. But what a campaign: 233,906 friends were uncermoniously dropped for a Whopper. As was mentioned in various blogs, if you were one of those were dropped, you were dropped for 1/10 the value of a Whopper, about 24 cents.
Meanwhile, Burger King has or will be giving away 23,290 Whoppers, with six remaining friend left over in the equation who were apparently dropped for nothing at all.
Oh, the injustice of it all.
Geoff Williams is a freelance journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-17-2009 @ 4:33AM
Tony said...
Sure, you can drop your "friends" in order to get a free burger, but who can prevent you from re-adding them later on? Or what if you just add people at random just for the purpose of dropping them... So is that campaign really doing anyone a favor? Yeah it's a good way to reduce the number of excess "friends" but by the end of it, the numbers will go back to their ridiculous levels again. I know people who have 300-500 so-called "friends", like if it was some kind of competition. When someone tries to add me as a friend, I usually turn them down if they have more than 40-50 friends; people have really forgotten the meaning of the word.... I think there shoud be other categories added such as:
"acquaintances" or "family members I am obliged to add" or "people I added because I felt sorry for them", or even "people whom I added just not to be rude by declining them" ...
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1-20-2009 @ 7:09AM
mamaragu said...
this program wasnt about cleaning up your facebook...but proving you love whoppers more!!!! all in fun, of course you could re-add you real friends if that is who you dumped....just another fun marketing program from burger king.
1-18-2009 @ 11:31AM
bondgirlno.9 said...
Ha! This is hilarious!
I stopped Facebook a few months ago, so I didn't see the ads, but the idea of getting dropped for 1/10 (24 cents) is pretty funny...I love that they get a letter too. Ah, advertising puppetry.
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1-20-2009 @ 7:31AM
otrpu said...
I have no friends at anybook, and I don't want any, nor do I want a free whopper
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1-20-2009 @ 8:33AM
sweetjuliek said...
All the more reason to watch what you eat!.. Best way to do that is to cook for yourself! I found this hilarious cookbook called "Get in the Kitchen, BIT@HES!" (bitchcooks.com)- It has made cooking fun again!
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1-21-2009 @ 6:54PM
LJB said...
Oh please - we add "friends" on facebook who share the same games as we play - you get special advantage in certain games by having a lot of "friends" in your crew. Do we know them - no. Who cares! Get over it people. I just deleted over 200 friends this week - they were added for a game I decided I no longer wanted to play. No "dropped" emails were sent - no whoppers promised - just the ebb & flow of facebook. That's how it works! :-)
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1-20-2009 @ 9:22AM
Dave said...
BK USED TO HAVE A PHONE NUMBER FOR A SHORT SURVEY ON THE BACK OF THEIR RECEIPTS, FOR DOING THE SURVEY YOU GOT EITHER A FREE WHOPPER OR A CHICKEN SANDWICH WITH THE PURCHASE OF A SMALL DRINK AND SMALL FRIES, CHECK OUT THE BACK OF THE RECEIPTS WHEN YOU GO TO THE FAST FOODS, ENJOY
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1-20-2009 @ 11:24AM
lucibyrd2 said...
It's a good deal 2 for one but who can eat 2 Whoppers at once and if you try to save it then it gets yucky. Mabey buy one and get a free overpriced drink to wash it down would be better.
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1-20-2009 @ 12:06PM
surfin_n_draggin said...
I stopped eating BK years ago! Their free Whoppers were like getting a free Enema!
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1-20-2009 @ 1:40PM
Ka said...
HAHAAHAHAHHA that was funny.. the best reply yet
1-20-2009 @ 12:31PM
alotx said...
I rather eat seal meat.
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