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I Love You Less Than Beef

It is becoming an increasing trend for established businesses to utilize social networking sites in order to promote themselves, but Burger King has taken that trend and put a slightly different spin on it. Rather than promoting positive discussion on forums like MySpace or Facebook, Burger King has officially launched the “Whopper Sacrifice.”

This new campaign has Whopper-crazed Facebookers install the Whopper Sacrifice application to their Facebook profiles. Then all you have to do is de-friend 10 people, enter your email address, and a coupon for a free Whopper will be sent your way. The campaign was initially launched in order to promote BK’s latest beef concoction, the “Angry Whopper.”

But before you clamber for your free burger, remember the old adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch. After all, this campaign is called a “sacrifice” for a reason. De-friending doesn’t usually alert the dumped contact, but with this application, a note will be sent to all your rejected friends of yesteryear. So if you want your burger, you’ll have to let 10 people know they are worth approximately 30 cents to you.

Funny, cutthroat, and … delicious. Generating a tremendous amount of buzz, anyone that doubts the effectiveness of this campaign can simply look at the numbers. In the time it took me to write this article, an additional 566 friends were sacrificed, bringing the running total to 233, 313.