Early in the twenty-first century, Burger King unveiled one of the most fascinating and innovative advertising efforts. With the launch of their "Subservient Chicken" in 2004, they gave a whole new meaning to the slogan "Have it your way."
The Subservient Chicken promotion was initially launched to promote and market their TenderCrisp Chicken Sandwich, which allowed customization based on customer preferences and tastes. It centered its marketing efforts on the concept that customers should feel free to personalize and tailor their chicken sandwiches to their preferences. Now what was the campaign all about and what is this subservient chicken! Subservient Chicken is basically a submissive character of chicken made by Burger King that would dance, squat, sleep, fall, and do anything that it is told to do. This campaign manifested itself in television commercials, print ads, a very successful website marketing program as well as a pay-per-view program.
In one of its TV spots, a man could be seen thumbing through various Polaroid and commanding the chicken what it should wear. On the other hand, the below image shows the homepage of the subservient chicken’s website as part of the campaign where there is a command bar at the bottom for users to enter and submit the command and have the chicken do what they tell it to do. It features a meagerly decorated living area and the chicken mascot standing in the middle. The whole idea was to give out a webcam adult-focused vibe. Several visitors got fooled into actually considering the fact that it is a live webcam, however, there were already somewhere around 300 commands pre-entered and pre-filmed for this website’s execution.
After the penetration of the chicken mascot and the whole “Chicken the way you like it” idea, Burger King reproduced it in several other hands following the campaign. There is another intriguing campaign made along the same lines where they are asking customers if they have seen the Chicken anywhere assist appears to have been missing and giving the people its last whereabouts. The Ad is illustrated in the below image.
The main audience that this campaign is talking to is the young adults who like to command and want things their own way. This audience doesn’t want anything or anyone define them and would like to set their own rules and standards for their lives to follow. It further targeted the audience from 18 years to 45 years of age and the ones who engage more on the internet and spend time on online platforms.
Targeting the American Beliefs and Values and the Signs that Lead Towards Them
Freedom
One of the popular beliefs that this ad campaign is selling among the young audience is the idea of freedom. It is a popular culture among this particular group not to submit to anyone or anything and not to get intimidated. This is exactly what the campaign is selling; that the customer is free to command and be served as well as others are obliged to follow their commands and be manipulated. It suggests that they have the power to mould things and situations the way they like them and whenever they like them.
Rebelliousness and Open to Experimentation
Another reason why the campaign got so much popularity among this audience is that it is telling the people not to conform to the already set standards but to come out of it and thrive for things that have not been explored earlier. The attitude of rebelliousness is perhaps subtly present in these campaigns that they are not born to just be offered the kind of chicken that the companies would like to offer but it is in their hands to be rebellious and experiment with it.
Authority
Another value is the value of authority. However, the kind of authority that the campaign is trying to offer has no limits. It is telling the audience how it is okay to be authoritative and to expect things to be your way. The kind of power that it is giving in the hands of these inexperienced youth is boundless the message is that it is perfectly okay to have that kind of authority because they “deserve” it. It also moreover normalizes the idea of expecting submission from others.
Mockery
There is a lot of mockery message in this campaign because the kind of commands that the campaign had pre-filmed and expected people to submit in the command button suggests so. Some of these commands that have a mocking message include:
Tap Dance
Poke your eye out
Pee on the couch
Headbang
Die
Pee like a dog
Pee in the corner
These are only some of the examples of the commands given to the chicken that are full of mockery and ridicule, thus making the whole idea of ridiculing others okay.
Creativity
Another important thing that the campaign suggests is the level of creativity it used and the comprehensive and all-inclusive 360D campaign idea that it had integrated. It is impressive to see the level of creativity and innovation used in this campaign and suggests how it appreciates novel ideas and the promotion of them.
Overall Cultural Analysis
One of the most important reasons of this ad appealing to the young adults that it was also targeting was the fact that these are the people who are usually and mostly engaged on online non-conventional format. There are analysis and statistics on the internet and researches show that not only this audience was okay spending around 7 minutes on the website palying around with the chicken but they also absolutely loved the concept and it “became a pop culture favorite”. This was mentioned by Burger King’s marketing executive in one of the post campaign interviews. The Chicken became a talk of the town instantly and also made appearances on Fox’ Sunday night shows.
The statistics also suggests that as many as 14 million visitors that are unique and more than 400 million hits. These statistics came out in 2005 after one year of its release. Following the campaign, the sales officials of Burger King stated that their TenderCrisp sold better than their Original Chicken Sandwich.
The beliefs and values mentioned above are all that the campaign tried to promote and also the idea of rebelliousness is shown in the campaign idea itself. We all know that Burger King is not into chicken sandwiches and people never really bothered if they do make a chicken sandwich or not. But with the release of this campaign, the company themselves tried to shun these opinions and wanted to tell the audience that they can do and will do exactly as per the liking of its customer.
Works Cited
Taylor, Kate. "Burger King Bets 'Subservient Chicken' Ad Campaign Will Go Viral Again." Entrepreneur. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Nov. 2017.
Morrison, Maureen. "Burger King Resurrects Subservient Chicken." Adage.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Nov. 2017.
Anderson, Mae, and Mae Anderson. "Dissecting 'Subservient Chicken'." Adweek.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Nov. 2017.
"Burger King's Subservient Chicken Is Back." Time. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Nov. 2017.
"Burger King's 'Subservient Chicken' Marketing Campaign|Marketing|Case Study|Case Studies." Icmrindia.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 25 Nov. 2017.
