I received an email this morning from MadWaves highlighting a fantastic collaboration between Burger King and You Tube using MadWaves technology.
Have It Your Way Remix is a mashup tool using Universal Music artists, including Pussycat Dolls, Nelly, Rihanna and Mariah Carey.
It's a pretty simple tool involving picking two videos and adjusting the audio and video balance between the two. I initially tried Weezer's Pork and Beans and Snoop Dogg's Drop It Like It's Hot, but I suck. I then tried Don't Cha and Umbrella which was better but I still suck.
You can save your efforts and view other people's. Unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, you can't embed the results, but it's still a quality free tool and another good example of how Burger King have progressed in using online media as a means of offering free, valuable content to users.
Unsurprisingly, it's pretty much the sort of thing you'd see as an aside in an episode of Family Guy, which is always going to be great value for fans waiting for the next series. I'll be hoping to see it popping up on sites far and wide in the near future. I don't know how often new episodes will come along, but I would suspect there's a good sized stash of material waiting to go.
Fast Food giant Burger King could score a real hit with their latest venture into the online world.
According to the New York Times, everyone's second favourite burger chain is launching a tie-in with Seth MacFarlane and Google which promises to be something of an online first.
'Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy', dubbed 'Too Big For Your TV', will air exclusively on the Google AdSense network from September, as was announced in June. A Clockwork Orange-esque preview is available now at sethcomedy.com.
Burger King have, in a very savvy manner, managed to piggy back what could be a real phenomenon by including a 'lead-in' featuring a MacFarlane-animated version of the sinister Burger King character. These, it would seem, are in addition to pre-roll advertising prior to the Cavalcade clip. BK have also built a dedicated You Tube channel.
It's all a far cry from Burger King's previous attempt at harnessing the power of online and social media, when P Diddy's ham-fisted attempt (he's not entirely to blame - it was clearly someone else's idea) at encouraging people to interact made the cringeworthy effort below which became ripe for parody. Interestingly the Diddy connection has not ended there.
As for the MacFarlane venture,Tim Street pointed out that this could be an excellent and very targeted pioneer for a way (depending on which sites are chosen) of launching TV shows online, which is true.
What Burger King and Google haven't taken into account, and which as a Family Guy fan I think they would do well to note, is that MacFarlane is not exactly unopinionated. There are numerous references to various outfits who have incurred his ire in Family Guy, including Twentieth Century Fox and the FCC. His new 'paymasters' would do well to note any subversiveness that could potentially undermine a beautiful partnership.
