Barkley Evergreen Makes Fun of Bloggers and Engages Social Media on Behalf of Sonic Drive-In, Gets it 85% Right

About a week ago, while watching King of the Hill on FX with Andy, I saw a commercial for the Sonic strawberry cheesecake milkshake. A man and woman are in a car at the drive-thru, talking about the deliciousness of the shake.

The man turns to the woman and says that he wants to post about the milkshake on his blog. “My readers will really enjoy hearing about my experience of this milkshake,” he says.

The woman then teases him, saying that only his mother reads his blog.

“That’s not true,” he responds, “she said she’d tell her neighbor about it.”

Not having TiVo, I spent the next few days hunting about the Web looking for a capture of the commercial and having no luck. I even would up calling Barkley Evergreen and Associates & Partners, the advertising firm responsible for the spot. They said that unfortunately, they hadn’t paid the talent to distribute that particular commercial over the Web and couldn’t oblige my request.

So until some kind soul TiVos the commercial and uploads it to YouTube, the best I have to link to is this transcript courtesy of Randy who blogs at photos-ect.blogspot.com.

But Barkley Evergreen/Sonic isn’t content to make fun of small-time bloggers on television. No, they’ve issued a mock challenge to the YouTube crowd, which has been creating their own hilarious versions of the Sonic Ads and uploading their own versions to the Web.

The challenge features the two guys who star in most of the Sonic Ads, issuing a challenge to the YouTube crowd to “bring it.” I would love to embed it here, but I can’t because the people at Barkley Evergreen have restricted embedding of the video in blogs (see left).

All in all, I think this is a good approach, engaging bloggers and social media addicts in a number of simultaneous media. It’s an amusing conversation, and one that has already boosted awareness of Sonic.

The only problem I see with this approach is that there is still a command and control mentality when it comes to the original material. Any time you start a conversation with a blogger, no matter what the original format, you have to make that opening salvo available digitally. Otherwise, you’re missing out on a boatload of free, viral advertising. By refusing to allow embedding of their YouTube challenge, and failing to make the milkshake commercial available online at all, Barkley Evergreen has missed a key opportunity to take their deservedly award-winning campaign to the next level.

We’ll be covering how social media, absent a command and control mentality can drive your marketing efforts to the next level at next week’s conference.