First, came the chicken. Then, it hatched hundreds of ideas.
In April 2004, Burger King was trying to rekindle its "Have it your way" slogan and promote its chicken sandwiches. In addition to standard 30-second television commercials, ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky also prepared a so-called viral campaign for the Web.
Viral ads -- also called pass-along ads -- spread by word of mouse: The goal is to make the ads so funny, charming, sexy, or controversial that viewers e-mail them to friends or post them on websites.
At www.subservientchicken.com, a cheap Web camera reveals a person in a chicken costume standing in a dingy living room. The chicken responds to typed commands, such as "tap dance," "take a bow" or "do push-ups." (Naughty requests are denied with a wagging wing.)
The website, which hardly mentions Burger King, has been visited more than 442 million times -- an average of 10 hits a second. In the 17 months since the Subservient Chicken debuted, dozens of the world's biggest marketers have scrambled to replicate its success and take advantage of the Internet's unique ability to move messages cheaply and quickly from person to person.
Some of the smaller ones who can't afford much TV advertising also are giving viral a shot.
The Subservient Chicken and other pass-along commercials had persuaded Chris Lombardo, founder of Red Guitar Advertising Studios in Newbury Park, to experiment with the new medium. The product being pitched: the gleaming exhaust systems from Borla Performance Industries Inc., Red Guitar's long-time client.
Alyse Borla, the Oxnard manufacturer's director of advertising and promotions, had received and sent several viral ads that made her laugh, and she imagined a Borla commercial worming through cyberspace forever.
On TV, "when the show's over, it's over," she said. "This can just keep going on and on."
And spending is going up, people knowledgeable about the business say.
Online advertising generated $9.6 billion in revenue last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That's only 6% of all advertising dollars, but it's growing fast. The stealthy nature of viral advertising on the Web -- marketers depend on the consumer to do their work for them -- makes it impossible to measure in dollar amounts, but advertising executives say it's becoming increasingly popular among major brand names as they adopt the Internet as an advertising platform.
