Are Burger Brands Engaged In Double-Agent Viral Marketing?

Viral marketing comes in two flavors.

One is where a creative, sometimes ingenious, catchy ad, act or idea that promotes some aspect of a brand or product grows in popularity, organically and exponentially, passed from one acquaintance to another, in the process boasting that acquaintance's endorsement.

This form of viral marketing is essentially a somewhat more engineered for of "word of mouth" marketing. Every brand that pulls it off should be proud and deserves all it gets.

Then there is the other form of viral marketing. Likewise, those doing it deserve all they get. Watch the video above and join us after the jump.

The Awl, calling it "black ops marketing," lays out the scenario behind the promotion of the viral video above, which is now picking up steam on YouTube:

"It's not very good or very funny, but it surely is black ops marketing for one major burger chain, even though it's shot in another major burger chain. And this is how the greatest minds behind the big business of viral marketing today apparently think is the best way to get their video 'picked up' by blogs: casual emails that look pretty much like emails anyone with a blog gets on a daily basis except… less good."

The video (above) depicts what appears to be a bunch of guys at a McDonald's in California who claim to find a Burger King "King" image on one of their McDonald's hamburger buns (and, conveniently, happen to already be taping their meal).

Uploaded by a YouTube user "jakeskatesf," his one and only video on YouTube bears this description: "We found this miracle bun at McDonalds at Fishermans Warf in San Francisco this weekend. The grill mark on the bun looks kind of like the Burger King, or maybe Jesus."

The video itself is fairly blah. But what leaves a bad taste is the suspicious email promotions surrounding the video. The Awl also posts several full emails sent to the blog's editors imploring them to "check it out for yourself" and to "please post and pass along." Subsequent emails make the same pleas.

A short search around the web finds the emails' language, verbatim, used in posts at Atom.com and College Humor. There are many more. And to further raise suspicions, the bun is now for sale on eBay.

It smells like an attempt to create a spark for a viral campaign -- almost a poorly thought out, anti-brand viral campaign, like some kind of horrible double-agent marketing espionage. If so, whichever brand is responsible is playing with fire. Is the gain from this, which so far has been feeble, really worth the risk?

More importantly, the guerilla marketers involved should change their messaging tactics or give up entirely and write it off as a loss. One thing is for sure, if they don't knock it off with the pathetically transparent emails, the only attention they are going to get is more exposure of how viral efforts can backfire as a few rotten eggs ruin it for everyone.