Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
April 2014
- A Mother's Failure Sends Ben Carson on to Success
- Disability Won't Be A Failure If You Choose To Succeed
- A Debt Collector That Helps You Fight Failure
March 2014
- The Enemy of Creativity is Fear of Failure
- Packing On Pounds For The Better
- National Football Team of Afghanistan Beats The Odds
- Theodore Roosevelt's Failure Became A Success
- Asking For Help Is Not A Failure
February 2014
- Beethoven's Enormous Failure
- Getting Kicked Out of School Turned Into A Success
- Failure and Expeditions Go Hand-In-Hand
- Breast Cancer Survivors Fight Failure With Tattoos
- Teaching Children To Have a Stiff Upper Lip
January 2014
- Louis CK Brings On Failure
- Bugs Bunny's Failure With Nimrod
- Success After Failed Suicide Attempts
- A Creative Use For Number 2
- A Bridge Failure Made A Family Stronger
December 2013
- Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream Made By Failure
- Cyndi Lauper's Failures Lead To Success
- The Failure of a Tipless Restaurant
- Dove Takes On The Failure Of Stereotypes
- Troublemakers Are More Successful Entrepreneurs
November 2013
You Should Unfriend 10 People on Facebook
Your Facebook friends are real people. But one marketing campaign challenged fans to dump ten friends to get a tasty prize. Seriously.
The story comes from Serious Eats, a website of people who are not kidding around about food and especially food marketing.
Their article is titled Unfriend 10 People on Facebook, Get a Free Whopper.
Burger King [offered] a free Whopper if you unfriend 10 people on Facebook. Use the WHOPPER® Sacrifice application on Facebook to get started. Maybe you have 10 Facebook friends you don’t care about. Or join forces with other random Whopper lovers and use [aka, dump] each other just to get a coupon for a free Whopper.
Let’s all take a good look at what you’re getting in exchange for deleting people from your virtual life:
Photo © Flickr User joshuaheller
This promotion is long gone, but the comments on Serious Eats remain. One from a user named “Big B” details the brutality of this campaign:
FYI, unlike when you normally delete a friend on FB, if you do a Whopper sacrifice the victim *will* receive a notification… saying that they were sacrificed for a burger.
What does the Whopper Sacrifice marketing campaign have to do with failure? Just about everything. First: this is fairly negative as far as marketing goes. Burger King is saying (albeit somewhat jokingly) that their burgers are better than having friends. That’s just cruel.
Second, the BK team is taking advantage of self-created “negative” publicity. Being cocky is part of their brand, and apparently, it works.
Failure is the secret to success. Maybe the Whopper Sacrifice program didn’t last (perhaps because they gave away too many free flame-broiled burgers) but it shows a willingness to take risks. That’s the essence of creativity, in marketing and beyond.
Related Posts
- Email Failures and SuccessesSo, we sent out a bunch of emails to the many, many people Robby has met over the years to announce the book. We learned a lot about email failure.