When Barbarian Group and CP+B unleashed Burger King’s Subservient Chicken ten years ago, the work was lauded as some of the best and weirdest ever to come from the brand. Well the brand is bringing the man in a chicken suit back for a redo. Sort of.
Last Thursday, Burger King posted a picture of Subservient Chicken on its Twitter account with the hashtag #tbt and “We miss you, Subservient Chicken.”
We miss you, Subservient Chicken. #TBT pic.twitter.com/msrZqeX0PH
— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) April 24, 2014
On Sunday, the brand ran missing persons ads in the New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle and others. And they’ve revived subservientchicken.com. But if you visit the site, the chicken is missing.Over a blurry flickering image of the Chicken’s living room, there’s just an old school pop up that says, “Help. There’s a chicken on the loose and we are desperately trying to find him.” Also on the site are grainy images of the Chicken’s last known whereabouts.
Bringing the campaign to current day status, a #FindTheChicken hashtag is put forth to be used by people helping to find the chicken. And on Wednesday morning, the brand will release a video focusing on the rise and fall of internet celebrities.
The Barbarian Group is not involved in this reworking of the campaign. The revised effort, which touts the chain’s Chicken Big Chicken, was created by Ogilvy’s David, Code & Theory and Horizon.
Clearly the brand hopes to bring back the viral success of the original campaign. But as history has proved in just about every segment of life, sequels rarely live up to the original.
But hoping for “50 Sequels That Were Better Than The Original” sort of success, Burger King CMO Eric Hirschhorn said,”It’s the 10 year anniversary and we want to celebrate our new Chicken Big King sandwich, truly in epic fashion. This sandwich is a big deal so it felt fitting to partner with the Subservient Chicken who is a pop culture icon.”
