The Challenge: At the time, Burger King’s advertising was generally seen as boring, irrelevant and unimaginative. They were looking for a credible approach to make their advertising more edgy and cool. Burger King’s agency of record, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, had created the chicken character but they didn’t know how to bring it to life online.

What We Did to Make It Awesome: We collaborated with Crispin Porter + Bogusky to develop an elaborate interactive video-based site that allowed people to type in commands that controlled the chicken. We managed all the front-end production, created the database of search terms and developed all of the technology on the back-end to enable it to work seamlessly. It was so creepy, weird and well-executed that many people who visited the site thought that they were actually controlling this person in a chicken suit in real life.

The Results: Quite possibly the most successful marketing website of all time. Over a billion hits. One hundred million unique visitors. Sales of Burger King’s chicken sandwiches doubled in a matter of weeks. It was the One Club’s campaign of the year. But maybe Adweek said it best in its cover story about the chicken: “Did it work? The answer? A resounding yes.”

And lo, on April 7, 2004, the Subservient Chicken was born.

It was a pretty awesome idea, really, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky was genius in getting it sold to their clients. But more than anything, we think, what it did was validate these lines of thinking: you can “talk to” the Internet populace. You can take risks with your message. You can get the word out without necessarily blowing a lot of money. And that you can utilize the relationships – electronic and personal – between people and groups to spread ideas and messages, and it can still work even if the message is, at its core, commercial in nature. Sometimes.

Of course we didn’t dream it up. And of course we don’t claim credit for inventing viral marketing or word of mouth or making stupid stuff for the Internet. We were simply fortunate enough to have been involved in the phenomenon that proved all of the theories correct. Lord knows we’ve had lots of theories that didn’t pan out. But this one did. In a big way.

It’s caused some fallout – the year solid we spent with companies calling us and literally asking for a subservient this or that. The way the phrase word “a viral” has crept into our lexicon, and how awful it is, and how even though you hate it you still accidentally find yourself using it from time to time. And, worse, the literal-minded approach to it all. The concept of the “viral video.” The idea that something can be, at its outset, a viral. The strange insistence of some people that, when trying to achieve this sort of success, they are promised that it definitely WILL work, regardless of how funny it is, regardless of whether or not anyone would actually care.

Let’s focus on the good for now, though. The Chicken made the cover of Business Week (maybe we’re imagining that but it was definitely in there). It got everyone agreeing that there were different approaches to be tried. It got everyone to understand the power of the Internet as an advertising medium. And yes, yes, it sold a lot of freaking chicken sandwiches. It did. Please stop saying “sure, it was great, but did it sell chicken sandwiches.” That’s the old you. The new you believes it. It sold a lot of chicken sandwiches.

It kicked off a shift in thinking from our advertising clients. “We need people not just to build this or that banner or website, we need people who understand the Internet. We need people who can help us speak to this audience. Who can help us translate our brand for this audience.” Well, maybe we were just hoping they started thinking like that. Regardless of the veracity of that sentence, by mid-2004 our clients were looking for a deeper level of thinking from us. And we stepped up to deliver. Because we love the Internet. And being creative. And we want to see the Internet stay the fun place it is.