Crispin Porter + Bogusky = HOT

Client: Burger King

Madonna may have taken the pop music industry by storm with her hit, "Like a Virgin," but Crispin Porter + Bogusky has fully ingrained the V-word into marketing speak with the daring yet controversial Whopper Virgins campaign.

The concept was straightforward: Find people who never tasted a hamburger before (surely a limited demographic in this day and age), feed each of them a Whopper and a Big Mac, and let them decide which was more pleasing to their palates. "By embarking on a voyage of this magnitude that held no guarantees and left us open to vulnerabilities, we took a leap of faith that our signature product would win people over at first bite," said Russ Klein, Burger King's president of global marketing, strategy, and innovation, in a news release.

With a project that captures this "first bite" in documentary style, it's hard to say whether Whopper Virgins pokes fun at itself, or if it was indeed serious about delivering Whoppers to the unenlightened masses. The latter theory incensed some folks to label the campaign an act of presumptuous new-age imperialism.

CP+B continued to fuel the fire with another hot idea: the much-lauded and disputed Whopper Sacrifice Facebook app, which tempted users to swap 10 of their friends for a free Whopper -- but with a catch: Any sacrificed parties would be notified that they had been snubbed for a burger. In short, it was a digital massacre. A total of 233,906 friends had been wiped out by the time Facebook and Burger King agreed to "sacrifice" the application after just one week of activity.

Not only did this campaign pose the question, "What is a Facebook friendship worth?," but it also managed to get people (and Facebook itself) all hot and bothered. Anytime personal emotions are involved, people might get hurt, but they also get interested. CP+B took a risk by angering some and amusing others, but it managed to engage Burger King's target audience in a fresh and memorable way.

Some might say that Burger King was right to gamble on a "Have it Your Way" relationship with its agency. Meanwhile, others may argue that Burger King gave CP+B too much free rein and endangered the brand's reputation.

What's not up for debate is that CP+B knows how to create a splash in the industry. Its work inspires reactions that run the gamut from awe to disgust, but at the very least, neither Burger King nor CP+B can complain about how much attention the Whopper has received. Now, whether that attention was worth the risk -- that's a matter of dicussion for our panelists.

-- Emily Chang, editorial intern, iMedia Connection