So until this Sunday, October 3rd, all those who purchase a Burger King Whopper receive a free music download. How does this work? Burger King has teamed up with America On-line Inc, to give away one free music download with every purchase of Burger King's Original Whopper sandwhich. If you happen to be really hungry and choose to enjoy the Original Double Whopper then you are the lucky recipient of two free music downloads. This offer is valid at any Burger King in the United States and is as simple as logging on to www.haveityourway.com and plugging in the alphanumeric code that appears on the wrapper of the popular sandwhich.
Are you interested yet? Well, here is a little more information. You can choose from up to 700,000 songs listed on AOL Music (through partnership with MusicNet) and yes, this includes new releases from popular artists of many different genres of music. For the more discerning music enthusiast there is also the option to log onto Sessions@AOL and hear AOL Music's weekly concert series featuring live performances by many different popular artists including Usher and Avril Lavigne among others. Some of the downsides are that once you have downloaded the particular song, you cannot transfer the file to another computer, and although you can burn it onto a cd, you are limited to doing so 5 times.
The idea behind this particlar marketing scheme is for Burger King to redeem itself with the many burger eating consumers who according to studies, fail to identify any particular marketing image with the second ranked fast-food chain. This campaign is throwing out a wide net as it has several different specific target consumer groups in mind. One television advertisement features "WHOPPERHEADS" who are young men, while yet another advertisement is aimed at African-Americans. Additional promotional commercials are in the works to target the Hispanic community. McDonald's was the first to implement this type of promotion when it teamed up with Sony in early June of this year to do the same.
It is also interesting to note that Burger King launched it's Have It Your Way free music download promotion at local colleges and universities throughout the country. They handed out blank cds labeled with their slogan in addition to "Mix It Your Way". This was an attempt to get young people interested in the idea of downloading free music through haveityourway.com and making mixed cds from downloaded music. Sounds like a good plan to me. Except....
Why would anyone care to shell out the 1.99$ (I'm guessing) for a hamburger to obtain a code to enter into a website to then download a free song when they can just do it for free? With the many P2P softwares already in existence and readily available to the novice computer user, why would anyone go through this process to get what they already can? Are the marketing experts hoping that we will get so caught up in their jazzy commercials that we will forget that we are already doing fine without them? There is no need to throw a burger into the mix when it comes to free music. If it ain't broke don't fix it is the old addage that comes to mind.... Although there are no statistics available as of yet with regards to the success of this particular promotional scheme, I am curious to see who exactly this appealed to. It also amuses me that colleges and universities is where Burger King felt it appropriate to launch this marketing scheme when it is widely known that young people are the most frequent users of P2P software.
If it works, good for them. If it doesn't, it makes you think that maybe Burger King should rethink their marketing firm choices...
Why would anyone care to shell out the 1.99$ (I'm guessing) for a hamburger to obtain a code to enter into a website to then download a free song when they can just do it for free?
Easy answer. The distribution system is more reliable than the average P2P program. Same reason a lot of people use iTunes. If I search for a song on Kazaa, it takes a while to find a good version that is properly named, encoded at an acceptable bitrate, not cut off, not harboring viruses in the download, etc. When someone downloads from a corporate site, that site is usually well organized and has reliable downloads of high quality music without any drop-outs in sound or strange inconsistencies. Also, it's definitely legal - a benefit for many people.
Now, I'm not saying it's worth running to BK with my $1.99. But if I happen to eat a Whopper, I don't have a problem with redeeming my coupon to use a reliable service to download a free song. The whole point is use a free trial to hook some people on the ease of use and quality of the service. Maybe they will succeed.
Posted by: John Arnone | October 03, 2004 at 02:35 AM
Okay, here's the catch.
I went to Burger King during the promotional period (not because I wanted a download... I was just hungry.) I get a nice, shiny wrapper that says I get a free download. I can "Have It My Way".
Unfortunately, "My Way" wasn't exactly right-away. I held onto the wrapper for a couple of weeks because I wanted to wait until I had access to a high-speed connection. With my class schedule, it wasn't exactly a priority.
The point. By the time I finally decided to go to the website to redeem my coupon, I couldn't figure out where to enter my number. It seemed that the site must have changed, because I just wasn't able to see anything. Turns out you only had until October 17th to redeem the coupons.
Why on earth would you go to the trouble of creating a promotion, run it for a month, then turn off the website before all the coupons can be redeemed? Are you trying to alienate the suckers who decided to buy a Whopper, even though they didn't want it, just because they thought they were getting something for free?
I'll tell you what, "Having it MY WAY" has a different meaning now. Sure, we're talking about something you can buy for.. what... 99 cents? I think Wal-mart sells downloads for 88 cents. When you give away something, don't take it back before a person gets a chance to redeem it. THE LEAST YOU COULD HAVE DONE WOULD HAVE BEEN TO PUT AN EXPIRATION DATE ON THE STUPID WRAPPER!!!!
Have it your way. Walk across the street and get a Big Mac instead.
Posted by: Fred Msoti | November 03, 2004 at 08:08 PM
I LIKE THE BURGERS THAT YOU MAKE AT BURGER KING.THEY ARE VERY GOOD.
Posted by: DEBBIE | November 15, 2004 at 08:52 PM