Burger King’s Angry Whopper & Facebook Debauchery
Burger King’s launch of their new Angry Whopper in 2009 changed social media advertising forever. They’d already shown they could pull off a popular viral website idea with The Subservient Chicken but what they did next for The Angry Whopper was nothing short of insanity when you realize it was on behalf of a fortune 100 client. This campaign showed there was nowhere online you could go where advertisers wouldn’t be pulling out all the stops to get you to engage.
Burger King’s Angry Whopper
The original version of the Angry whopper sold back when it was first released in 2009 was just your regular Whopper but with spicy onions, jalapeños, pepper jack cheese and a spicy “Angry Sauce.” As with everything from that era of Crispin Porter + Bogusky (just Crispin now) it had to be pulled off in an extreme way. For 2009 that meant the launch of both a website (which is long dead), angry-gram.com as well a Facebook campaign that had them temporarily banned from the platform.
The Facebook Debauchery
This Facebook campaign required you to unfriend 10 people through their app (who would be notified that you unfriended them for a burger) and they would reward you with a coupon for a free Angry Whopper. It was so popular that it scared the higher-ups at Facebook and they forcibly took it down after only 10 days for violating it’s user agreement. The app alone received 13 million media impressions while it was active and jumped to 32 million after it had just a landing page guiding you to the angry-gram website.
Over 230k people had been unfriended and it was more popular as a taboo, now deleted app than it was when it was actually live. They were the first advertising agency to figure out how to milk that platform for views and that was by showing just how little people cared about who was on their friend-list and how easily you could game the system. Before this they had introduced us to how to create an internet phenomenon with The Subservient Chicken
with the site gaining almost 400 million hits within a year (average time spent per user on site was 7-8 minutes!). They also created a few other off-color online properties like WhopperFreakout and WhopperVirgins, both sites getting a quarter of a million views each in the first month alone(both sites are also dead so no link). They broke the mold on how to gain consumer engagement online.
The Google Ad Campaign
Creating games and fun commercials wasn’t the whole campaign though. They also purchased top ranking positions for various keywords related to not only the Angry Whopper but also numerous other high-priced search phrases and competitor products. They undoubtedly were having to increase their ad buy daily as competitors moved to try and outrank the BK ads. The combined strategy left you very few places on the internet where you wouldn’t come across some sort of Burger King related media. This was probably one of the more expensive PPC buys for any brand at the time, let alone a fast-food restaurant.
My Initial Reaction
When I first wrote about this back in 2009 I said the following towards the end of my little write-up:
It combines word-of-mouth marketing with social media in a way that encourages users to spread the application across their online communities. It’ll be interesting to see the analytics on how well this application does in a month or so.
A couple of months later I remember talking with a good friend about the metrics/analytics they reported and he put it perfectly, “If Bogusky comes to you with an idea, sign off on it immediately.” Boy was that the truth. By the time of this campaign he’d already been inducted to the American Advertising Federations Hall of Achievement , received an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado Boulder and was crowned the Creative Director of the Decade by Adweek (In addition to winning just about every award out there in the industry). What was left to do? Easy, he “retired” from advertising and moved to Boulder, CO to become a consumer advocate in 2010. He’d eventually return to CP+B for a short stint in 2018 only to retire yet again in 2020. Nowadays you can occasionally catch him on the “Joy of Bike ” YouTube channel helping connect kids with bikes & teaching us “Over 40s” how to ride fast. Go subscribe and if you get a chance to hear him speak, I’d recommend it as he has a fascinating take on life.
A Not So Spicy End
They launched the Angry Whopper internationally with various TV commercials to back up how uncontrollably spicy it supposedly was. I remember trying the burger back when they first came out because I’m a big fan of spicy food and may have eagerly dropped ten friends to get one for free (I can’t recall). I’m sorry to report though, this was quite literally a nothing-burger in terms of how spicy it was. After the initial media blitz and charm wore off and negative reports started coming in via food reviewers they eventually took it off the menu. At least, for a few years that is.
Attempts at Bringing The Angry Whopper Back
Burger King has attempted to bring back the Angry Whopper multiple times throughout the past decade, notably in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2019 all featuring their own over-the-top commercials. While they never achieved as great of a social “buzz” as they did with the first campaign in 2009, they did manage to create a mini-cult following . While I wouldn’t be surprised if that was actually just another brand-sponsored astoturf campaign you have to admire their tenacity. They even tried renaming it to the Angriest Whooper, which also didn’t pan so well in terms of taste and consumer reception.
Is The Angry Whopper Ever Coming Back?
All signs point to yes. They recently brought it back late last 2023 but only in the Columbus, Ohio area and some parts of Canada. In case you were unaware, Columbus is ground zero for fast food companies testing new products. A mixture of the large size of the city added with the fact it’s right in the center of the Midwest, then you top that off with the prolific number of colleges in the area and you’ll understand why.