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Burger King Has Dropped Its Wallet

by Eick · November 19th, 2008 · 110 Comments

It appears that in the last few days, there are a handful of bloggers who, by finding wallets on the ground, have unwittingly stumbled across the latest under-the-radar Burger King promotion. The fast food chain has dispensed agents across major U.S. cities (indications are it’s just been Chicago and Orlando so far ) to “lose” wallets. However, when unsuspecting passersby find these wallets and open them, they discover an interesting message:

Yep, the wallets include notes telling the individuals who find them to go ahead and keep the wallets. Time Out Chicago reported on November 12th that Burger King planned to drop 5,000 of these wallets around urban hot spots in Chicago. A handful of bloggers have found some of these wallets, and are reporting that they contain actual cash, ranging from a $1 bill to a $100 bill, a gift card to Burger King, a “Drivers License” featuring The King, and a map of Chicago or Orlando area Burger King’s.

Several bloggers have posted about their experience, or their friend’s experience, finding one of these wallets. See HERE, HERE and HERE for more on their stories. A couple of PR and marketing bloggers are weighing in as well, praising the promotion and calling it “unexpected and well-timed” given the current state of the economy.

This story hasn’t even bubbled up to the mainstream media yet. A Google News search for “Burger King” + “wallet” yields only one mainstream media story, from an NBC station in Chicago. Nor have stories about this promotion appeared yet on major marketing sites such as Adage or Adfreak.

This is a brilliant marketing move, and the mainstream media seems to be lagging behind on discovering it – but creative and unique marketing ideas like this one don’t go unnoticed forever. I expect much more widespread attention for this promotion as the word-of-mouth affect begins to trickle up the mainstream media.

Pictures via Ted.me.

Update: Apparently this idea isn’t original – Josh and Melanie point out in the comments that McDonald’s did something similar a couple years ago, as did GE Financial.

Update #2: An e-mailer and a commenter on Digg are reporting that these wallets were also spotted on the Arizona State and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s campuses.

Tags: Fast Food · Marketing

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