Burger King's social media efforts aren't working...according to Vivaldi Partners

From a report here.

Wasn't convinced of the value of their analysis until page 35. Seemed their core idea of social currency was getting lost in some fairly generic case studies.

However, the Burger King data was interesting. It resonated with my own experience of the brand online.

That although what BK are doing is at times funny, thought provoking and conversational - it appears they're not building much value into the brand...why? (perhaps their most on brand tactic - the delete a friend app was ironically - the only one to be banned)

My guess is because their tactic of "borrowed relevance" is too general. Its not connecting with the interests and habits of their core users. So a perfume or anthropological study - whilst admirable and whitty marketing casestudies - are not tactics the average 14 year old ordering his Whopper, is too interested in.

borrowed relevance...

Josh Bernoff published a report recently here talking about "boring" brands.

It resonated with me - a lot of the brands I work with at Dig for fire are what he'd define as "boring" - healthcare providers, banks, government departments, building supply merchants and educational institutions - brands that certainly aren't going to be adopted by users just because they're "cool" (I'm aware just using the term "cool" - means I'm likely to be anything but...)

As someone at the coal face of always on marketing, tasked with getting these sorts of brands to exist online, I can attest to the fact that a lot of the issues on a day to day level, come down to brands not being comfortable with "borrowing relevance".

Its not about "cool". Its about convincing brands to get involved with what people are actually talking about, as opposed to what the brand would like them to be talking about.

In other words - there is possibly too much getting stuck up on the relevance of the marketing tactic and not enough understanding, that so long as whatever the application or technology employed (the application, viral, widget, newsfeed, weird bit of technology) resonates with the brand essence - in most cases, that's enough to start.....

So long as they're contributing in a positive way, a brand in unfamiliar territory is something users probably take more notice of, at least initially. Removing friends from your facebook account has got precious little to do with eating burgers but it reinforced Burger King's playful, cheeky brand values. On the other end of the scale, Keep Britain Tidy publishing data in RDF format has nothing directly to do with picking up litter, but being seen at the cutting edge of web 3.0 means the brand can have conversations it could never have had, had it stuck rigidly to its push messaging plan and segmentation model.