How 30 Great Ads Were Made

04/

Burger King

Subservient Chicken

Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Burger King’s Subservient Chicken website was launched in 2004, and immediately caused an internet storm, receiving millions of hits in a matter of days. Its impact on the advertising industry as a whole was equally seismic – prior to Subservient Chicken, agencies and brands had been tiptoeing around using the internet, uncertain of how it could be useful to them, and viewing it more as a threat than an opportunity. Subservient Chicken showed that brands could use the web to be playful, to be risqué, and, most of all, to interact with their audiences.

‘It was a cool idea, and we took it way too far, and that’s why it worked.’

Initially, the campaign had been all about TV. Burger King ...