Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Much of Soho to our west is currently suffering with a power cut, leaving officies emptying onto the street, restaurants closed for business and an eerie feeling about the place.

A bad day for business you would think. However, I received an unexpected email from the Leon healthy fast food restaurant in Carnaby Street. It explained their dilemma:

“The power in and around us here at our Carnaby Street restaurant is down. Electricity, it has been confirmed today, plays a useful role in our restaurant. We can’t open as normal, but want to make sure you don’t go without. We have the where-with-all (is that the word?) to make sixty packed lunches, and we want to take care of you.”

A nice way to notify their regulars as to the problem and a great way of making them, and me, feel special and more loyal. In the interests of ‘research’, I went down with the email in my hand as instructed and claimed one of the 60 free salads and piece of cake and fruit. Delicious.

No doubt they had already made the salads, but the generosity to add cake and fruit turned it into a neat piece of marketing and a great way of making the best of a bad circumstance.

I’ll be back when the power’s back on.

Just how do you follow Burger King’s legendary viral ‘Subservient Chicken’? Well, the wags at Crispin Porter + Bogusky keep trying with various degrees of success.

The latest chicken-themed campaign is Huckin Chicken, involving a man on a motorcycle in a chicken suit performing a series of increasingly dangerous stunts. The viral is a clever extension of the related Burger King ads using behind the scenes footage. As the number of visitors grows, they show additional clips, leading to a ‘world record’ chicken jump after 1m visitors.

At the time of writing, I’m not aware of whether the Guinness Book of Records has added the record to their books. Perhaps they are waiting for other flying chickens to come forward first?

Given its relation to the ads, it is heavier branded than previous virals, with brand mentions in the ad, on the back of the bike and the final ads themselves on display.

It’s well executed and another creative piece of work, but maybe it’s time to move on now, guys. We’ve all seen enough viral chickens for one lifetime.

P.S. One disturbing note was a throwaway comment saying that the pit was specially dug to film the footage as ‘originally this was all giant redwoods’. I sincerely hope not, as I know which I’d prefer to see.