control, branding, and @theBKlounge

So there's a well-thought out (and oft hilarious) reveal of the @theBKlounge project written by Indiana-University-student-turned-brand-hijacker Caleb Kramer that's hit the press today.

What I find most interesting is that the project reflects the all-too-often-forgotten truth that we have control over what we build/present to the world, but no control over what people do with/take out of it.

Where Caleb's original intent was:

"I thought, how cool would it be if Burger King created a Twitter account called theBKlounge? Users could tweet “@theBKlounge” every time they visited the restaurant."

the end result was a much different beast.

In the comments, there's a good piece where he talks about being followed by creatives at CP+B. An excellent thought about the true nature of transparency and control comes to mind, because it begs the question: to what extent can BK / CP+B / anybody truly have control over brands/characters that are so easily hijacked?

But actually... this isn't really an "easy" task, right? Do a quick search for any number of branded characters (@ronaldmcdonald came to mind, appropriately enough) and you'll find that a good many of them have zero to few followers.

It's not about just taking the name, it's about doing it well.

The conversation of late seems to be "the task is no longer to manage the brand, rather to guide it" (Kelley Mooney's The Open Brand is a great read on this). And that's exactly what has happened here. Caleb's project has become less an act of thievery and more an extension of the brand, by necessity guided by the rules that the BK brand has laid down well in advance. If he didn't play by those rules, he would never have seen the same kind of results, right?

If there's a lesson for brands here somewhere, I think that's where it can be found: brand "creators" still have a great responsibility in being the rule-setters and ultimately the brand's foundation. Users can take it wherever they want, but they've got to start somewhere.

Were you following @theBKlounge? What other hijacked faves do you guys have?

Comments

[Caleb]

Excellent. I feel that agencies as progressive as CP+B are learning how to somewhat integrate consumer generated content into their overall campaign. I will be posting about this in the next week or so. For example, their Whopper sacrifice campaign was obviously designed to generate discussion. In the end a small Facebook app created a lot more buzz than a TV spot would have. There is definitely a fine line though, and Burger King is walking it.

[Kyle Studstill]

Thanks for the time Caleb, I'm sure things have been hectic today! Looking forward to your upcoming thoughts. Interesting connection between 'discussion' and consumer-gen'd content. To some extent they are the same, in the sense that they follow the same rules, right? Both have that same line that you mention.

I'm curious: I'm thinking we'll be seeing more of the "what would you give up" message strategy show up in the very near future. Good? Bad? Will it tire out quickly?