An Advertising Genius: The Subservient Chicken

One of my all time favorite advertising campaigns is one employed by Burger King back in 2004 featuring a mini branch website called "Subservient Chicken". The goal of this campaign was to promote Burger King's new tendercrisp chicken and accompanying slogan "chicken your way". This started out as a popular TV ad featuring a man telling someone dressed up in a chicken costume what to do and after gaining popularity turned into an interactive online sensation.  Essentially, the branded website featured an interactive webcam with a man dressed up in a chicken costume who would perform different acts that the user typed into the command box.
This website went viral pretty quickly after its inception, meaning it gained immense online popularity and traffic in a short amount of time. I can remember this website being extremely popular among people in my generation, but it was also something adults could appreciate and connect with as well.This was a fun and hilarious way to spend time online, and I know that myself and my friends spent our fair share of time on the website. I remember thinking what a great idea the website was and gained respect and preference toward the Burger King brand, so for me, the campaign was effective.
The site attracted over 15 million users in the first 5 days and today counts over 450 million hits to the website. Although we have learned that website traffic or clicks through do not necessarily translate to advertising effectiveness or future purchase action, there is no doubt that a millions of people were actively interacting with Burger King's branded advertising and the buzz created around the video most likely created a positive impact on Burger King's sales. Regardless, the Burger King TenderCrisp campaign was a ground breaking internet phenomenon that helped to set the bar for interactive internet advertising today.

The command box at the bottom gives the option to "Get chicken just the way you like it. Type in your command here."