If you’re not getting the newsletter from MarketingProfs, I highly recommend it. Today, in a great article on integrated marketing, Matthew Syrett brings up the BK Chicken. Here’s another analysis of just what BK was trying to accomplish and some opportunities it opens up to the competition.

For instance, Burger King recently launched a buzz-worthy interactive promotion called the Subservient Chicken, which allows consumers to visit a Web site and give a man in a kinky chicken suit orders. ….

It was the hope of Crispin, Porter Bogusky, the creators of the site, to start moving the image of Burger King away from just being centered on beef burgers by transforming the buzz about an oddball chicken Web site into momentum for a full integrated push to sell more chicken sandwiches at a fast food restaurant mostly well-known for selling hamburgers.

While successful at creating buzz, the new promotion does leave the Burger King brand in a venerable place somewhere between its traditional image and the new one they are hoping to mint.

If I were one of Burger King’s competitors, I would be working double-time to make sure the handoff between promotion buzz building and image transformation does not occur seamlessly. One can sabotage this handoff by changing the discourse of consumers away from an interest in Burger King to questioning the meaning of this move by the company and its brand.

Why is Burger King abandoning its burger foundation? Can a fast food restaurant with “burger” right in its name really pull off a good chicken sandwich? And do I want to give business to a fast food joint that has a sadomasochistic bird as one of its mascots?

Striking at the Achilles Heel of Integrated Marketing