Burger King Marketing Campaign Analysis - Term Paper Example

?(Word count 050 – Excluding the questions and references) Burger King Case Study Critically analyze Burger King's "Whopper Freakout" marketingcampaign. Discuss the pros and cons of using viral marketing campaigns to promote a product. The subtlety of marketing activity is what usually concerns marketers in order to come up with perfect intimacy of customers’ behaviors, market trends and competitive advantage, all of which are for the purpose of achieving perfectly groundbreaking output. Certainly, marketers cannot compel consumers to buy their product or service offerings, but they can actually influence their buying behaviors. Of course, it is not the right approach to twist consumers’ arms to buy certain product or service offerings that would not perfectly match with their needs or wants. Thus, in modern marketing strategies, marketers have mastered the art of creating a need for their product or service offerings or constantly surprising the marketplace, an area where they have a high level of dexterity (Boone and Kurtz 11). The “Whopper Freakout” marketing campaign of Burger King is one of them. Although the forefront intention behind this was to find out if Whopper was the market’s favorite burger sandwich, the basic goal was still to create a need because this potentially resulted to word-of-mouth promotion highlighting the major justifications of the said product. The “Whopper Freakout” marketing campaign was a promotional strategy underlying the concept of viral marketing campaigns. Thus, aside from this, there are other principal advantages and disadvantages of using viral marketing campaigns to promote a product. One possible disadvantage of viral marketing campaign is the risk of flooding negative opinions associated with a certain product or brand. Viral marketing could potentially be successful on the part of the company if it is associated with positive conversation on a certain product or brand (Faheem 3). Thus, this specifically would further lead to content limitation (Allen 129). Word-of-mouth promotion therefore could only be successful if it significantly talks about the positive features of a product or brand. In the case of Whopper, prior to its viral marketing promotion, it was already one of the market’s favorite burgers. Thus, applying viral marketing would just ensure giving more to its advantage while ensuring at some point a fast-paced promotion. Therefore, it is clear that the major advantage of viral marketing campaign is speed (Schirmer 33). Through the word of mouth, if information is just only associated with positive opinions, viral marketing campaign is reliable based on the effectiveness of the speed of promotion. Thus, this would further minimize the additional cost that should be incurred in the dissemination of information that would be associated with the product or service offerings or brands. 2. Discuss the factors that resulted in the success of the Whopper Freakout campaign. Also enumerate the possible drawbacks of the campaign. One of the elemental factors that made Whopper Freakout campaign a success is the fact that Whopper was already one of its market’s favorite burger. In the event that this burger would have substantial issue, it would eventually become an integral component of consumers’ conversation in their daily lives, especially among those who have positive experience with this product. This is due to the fact that Whopper is a consumer good in a form of food. Considering that every people need to eat daily, Whopper Freakout campaign is such a strong strategic marketing campaign in order to reinforce customers regarding the prevailing status of the said product. Furthermore, when consumers would be informed about the status of the said product and they have important concerns as in line with their relevant impressions of it, application of viral marketing campaign would make sense. In fact, the success of this marketing activity is highly dependent on consumers’ first impression (Allen 151). As stated earlier, since Whopper already created corresponding market share due to linked positive feedbacks with it, creating a significant issue about it would remarkably trigger potential response from customers. In fact, this was actually what happened in the case of Whopper Freakout campaign. On the other hand, among the potential drawbacks of viral marketing campaign of Burger King for Whopper could be the response time and viral acceptance. These two are among the important factors that are rudimentary components of the success of viral marketing (Wuyts, Dekimpe and Gijsbrechts 264). However, in the case of Whopper, viral marketing would actually loss its potential impact if it has to be done the same way or exact style all over again. In this case, the response time and viral acceptance may potentially decline. In other words, in the case of Whopper and the viral marketing campaign associated with it, the same style could no longer be applied all over again for the next corresponding promotion. The reason is that there is a good chance consumers will be informed that the whole thing about viral marketing campaign is just part of the entire marketing activity or promotion that it may only end up with a little impact, the second time around. For instance, it is not good to keep telling the consumers that Whopper is again removed from the menu or has been discontinued. Viral marketing for Whopper will still work the next time around but Burger King should choose another style for this so as to sustain positive information through the words of mouth. After all, the presence of response time and viral acceptance cannot be overlooked as integral parts prior to the success of viral marketing campaign. 3. Discuss ways in which Burger King could have made the Whopper Freakout campaign more effective. It was actually good to test how customers placed a great value for Whopper. Correspondingly, it was a good methodology to inform customers that Whopper was removed from the menu and then monitor their reaction on this, just to find out the market value of the said burger sandwich. After all, understanding consumer behavior is a fundamental activity in marketing (Doyer and MacInnis 1). Monitoring customers’ reaction regarding this was actually a good indicator of Whopper’s market acceptance, but it could not actually substantiate the empirical evidence in order to support or build evidence that the said burger was America’s most favorite burger. This is due to the fact that from the time of the experiment, it was excluded in the methodology to ask specific opinion from the customers how they would rate Whopper among any other burgers available in the market. In other words, it was not only enough to observe customers’ reaction, but it would have been better if they were asked why they reacted the way they did. The data gathered from this could have potentially supported and provided empirical evidence leading to conclude that Whopper indeed was the America’s favorite burger. References Allen, Kevin. Viral Marketing 100 Success Secrets- Secret Strategies, Buzz Marketing Tips and Tricks, and Interactive Marketing: 100 Simple Online Campaign Principles. London: Lulu.com, 2008. Print. Boone, Louis E., and David L. Kurtz. Contemporary Marketing. 15th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2011. Print. Doyer, Wayne D., and Deborah J. MacInnis. Consumer Behavior. 5th ed. Mason, OH: Cengage Learning, 2008. Print. Faheem, Hadiya. Burger King’s ‘Whopper Freakout’ Marketing Campaign. Hyderabad: ICMR Center for Management Research, 2010. Print. Schirmer, Lennart. The Changing Communication of the Retail Industry: A Critical Analysis of the Status Quo and the Development of New Ways of Addressing Consumers. Munich: GRIN Verlag, 2007. Print. Wuyts, Stefan, Marnik G. Dekimpe, and Els Gijsbrechts. The Connected Customer: The Changing Nature of Consumer and Business Markets.New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. Print. Read More