In 2004 most brands treated the internet as a place to put a brochure. Burger King put a man in a chicken suit in a living room and let the whole internet boss him around.
The brief
Burger King had a new product to sell, the TenderCrisp chicken sandwich, and an old promise to revive: “Have it your way,” the slogan that said customers could order their food exactly as they liked it. Its agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (CP+B) of Miami, had a reputation for unconventional ideas and a young audience in mind, the kind of people who were spending more time online than watching TV ads.
The website
The Subservient Chicken launched on April 8, 2004. The site, built for CP+B by the digital studio The Barbarian Group, looked like a grainy webcam feed. In a slightly shabby living room stood a person in a full chicken costume. Below the video was a text box and an invitation to “get chicken just the way you like it.”
Visitors typed commands, and the chicken did them: dance, jump, sit, lie down, do push-ups, watch TV. Behind the scenes, the site matched typed words to a library of pre-recorded clips, so it looked like an interactive webcam.
The illusion that a live chicken was obeying you was the whole joke, and people spent ages testing it, trying to find commands it hadn’t anticipated, and sending the link to friends to do the same.
Beyond the website
The chicken moved into other media. The first TV commercial, “Subservient Chicken Vest,” extended the idea, and the campaign grew into a series of viral promotions for TenderCrisp by CP+B. Later spin-offs included “Chicken Fight,” built around a spicy version of the sandwich, and a one-time pay-per-view program. The chicken returned in 2006 in “Big Buckin’ Chicken,” and again in April 2014, when Burger King marked the character’s 10th anniversary to promote the Chicken Big King sandwich.
Why it worked
- It was interactive. Instead of watching an ad, people played with it, and the play was the message: have it your way.
- It was strange enough to share. A man in a chicken suit obeying strangers raised the question “who made this?” which is exactly what makes people forward a link.
- It barely looked like advertising. There was little branding on the page, which made discovering the Burger King connection part of the fun.
- It arrived early. Before YouTube and social feeds were everywhere, a novel website could spread by email and message boards almost unopposed.
Legacy
The Subservient Chicken is often cited as one of the first great viral marketing campaigns. It helped establish Crispin Porter + Bogusky as one of the most talked-about agencies of the 2000s, and it set a template Burger King has returned to many times: stunts that invite people to take part, and that spread because they are odd enough to talk about.