BURGER KING | Subservient Chicken | 2004
I emailed 16 friends and the internet glitched out / BURGER KING "Subservient Chicken"
Type "shake hands" to a guy in a chicken suit, and he actually shakes hands. This was 2004, back when the internet could still be amazed by something like that.
The problem
Back in 2004, Burger King was suffering through 21 straight months of falling sales. The newly hired agency CP+B had a challenge: how to launch a new chicken sandwich and bring the long-running slogan "Have It Your Way" into the modern age.
The insight
The turning point came when the creative directors took an idea originally meant for a TV commercial and decided to make it interactive instead. Starting from just two things—the new chicken sandwich and the brand's banner line "Have It Your Way"—they landed on the idea of a big, awkward chicken that would do whatever you told it to. There wasn't much deep theory behind it, and that's kind of the point.
The idea
They spent a full day filming a man in a chicken costume, recording more than 400 different actions in advance. When you opened the site, the chicken was there waiting, and whatever command you typed into the text box, the matching clip would play, as if it were obeying you in real time. You could make it dance, cluck, even play baseball. And there was a nice touch of craftsmanship too: if you gave it an inappropriate, impossible, or unprepared-for command, it would lean toward the camera and wag its finger no. At first, it was just one member of the production team emailing the link to a few dozen friends.
What happened
Within about a week, traffic exploded. Reportedly it got 15 to 20 million hits in the first week alone, and the total over the following year is said to have reached several hundred million hits. It won multiple advertising awards, including Best in Show at the One Show Interactive and a Grand Prix at Cannes Lions. On the sales side, it finally stopped the 21-month slump, and that year Burger King's growth reportedly outpaced McDonald's.
Afterthought
With almost no media spend—just a chicken suit, 400 video clips, and some emails to friends—they moved the sales chart of a massive brand. Back when the word "buzz" didn't yet carry much weight, this one piece basically proved, start to finish, what buzz really is. Watching it today, it's funny how you still kind of want to type in a command.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2004
