The Subservient Chicken
The Subservient Chicken is a viral marketing promotion by Burger King, originally as part of a promotion for the company's line of chicken burgers.
The campaign is based on a web site that features a person in a chicken costume. The actor performs a wide range of actions based on a user's input, showing pre-recorded footage and appearing like an interactive webcam. The site takes literally the advertising slogan "Get chicken just the way you like it".
There are more than three hundred commands that the Subservient Chicken will respond to, including:
- Michael Jackson dance moves such as "moonwalk"
- Riverdance
- The "elephant"
- Lay egg
- Walk Like an Egyptian
- Yoga
- Rage
- Spank
When told to strip, take off his mask, or do anything the Subservient Chicken considers offensive, the chicken walks up to the camera and shakes a scolding chicken finger in disappointment. When told to eat food from rival fast food chain McDonald's, he approaches the camera and places his finger down his throat, while when told to eat Burger King he has a more positive response. The chicken responds to the command "smoke crack" by smoking, but when told to "smoke a bong" he waggles his finger scoldingly.
Recently Buger King introduced its Chicken Fights campaign, the two "cockfighting chicken" advertising characters it is using in its chicken meat marketing campaign are modeled off of this chicken.