Thursday, October 22, 2009

So, what is the truth about Tony?


I've spent way too much time today trying to figure out what the point is of this video, "The Truth About Tony" which is currently on the Burger King site and presumably the work of one Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I get that the Tony in question, Tony Stewart, is a NASCAR guy who has an ongoing relationship with The King -- from an endorsement point of view. What I don't get is why, in this video, Tony undergoes a polygraph test, judging how truthfully he answers questions from viewers, closing with the inevitable BK questions -- about whether he loves the Whopper sandwich. (He does, and he didn't lie about it.)

OK, but at the beginning of this post, I said I couldn't figure out what the point of this was. Here are my questions:

  1. Why would people sit through 15 minutes of this? It's at least that long.
  2. Why can't you pause the version on BK.com, or or embed it?
  3. Why does the page with the video on it not even indicate how long it is?
  4. Why hasn't BK posted this to YouTube? (LiveStream, which provided the streaming for this, posted a blissfully abridged version.)
  5. Did Old Spice and Office Depot, whose logos are prominently featured on Stewart's shirt, sign off on this BK stunt?

Anyone who can answer these questions, lemme know.

2 comments:

Matthew Szymczyk said...

I was actually looking forward to checking this out as it's been plastered over Fox NFL advertising for the last month. Unfortunately, what I thought would be a great use of interactive video ended up being one very long streamed 'live' video that was hard to watch longer than 5-10 minutes...

http://weareorganizedchaos.com/index.php/2009/10/20/burger-king-embraces-real-time-interactive-video/

Anonymous said...

You can embed, share, pause, rewind, fast-forward and view individual question clips:

http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/truthabouttony/live-event.html