Burger King's Subservient Chicken

In 2004, Burger King needed to relaunch their 'Have It Your Way' brand platform and differentiate from McDonald's 'I'm Lovin' It' blitz. Agency CP+B had an idea that their own client initially called 'unsellable': a website with a man in a chicken suit who would do whatever you told him to. They filmed an actor in costume performing hundreds of actions — sitting, dancing, doing push-ups, playing air guitar, getting angry, moonwalking — then built a command-recognition system to match typed inputs to the right clip. The site launched with no press release, no paid media, and no announcement. Just a URL sent to a small group of people. Within 24 hours, 1 million people had visited. Within a week, 100 million commands had been entered. The chicken obeyed everything short of explicit requests. Burger King's 'Have It Your Way' became the most recalled fast food tagline of the year.

The subservient chicken was a literal product demonstration: Burger King lets you have it your way, so here's a chicken who does exactly what you say. The interactivity made the brand promise physical. Users weren't watching an ad — they were experiencing the tagline. The resulting brand recall was orders of magnitude above television equivalents.

1 million visits in first 24 hours with zero paid media. 100 million commands entered in the first week. 'Have It Your Way' brand recall hit its highest recorded level. Won every major interactive advertising award. Became the defining example of viral marketing cited in web history for a decade. Prompted every major brand to ask: 'Should we build an interactive website?'