# Burger King Subservient Chicken

> An interactive chicken site escaped its small seed list into blogs, forums and press.

- Owner: Burger King, CP+B and The Barbarian Group
- Kind: Campaign
- Sector: Food & beverage
- Seed date: 2004-04-07
- Milestone date: 2004-04-14
- Date basis: Documented milestone; not a measured attention peak.
- Spread Score: 10 (Niche, provisional), v1.2
- Mechanics: Transgression, Platform jump, Press loop

## Summary

Typed commands selected prerecorded performances: the team filmed more than 300 actions. The apparent webcam invited visitors to test its limits and compare discoveries. Blogs and forums spread the experiment; email forwarding and television also supported it.

## Timeline

- 2004-04-07 — CP+B (Open web) — The agency launched the site and sent its test link to 20 friends.
- 2004-04-07 — mildred-pitt on MetaFilter (Open web) — A MetaFilter post invited readers to try the interactive chicken.
- 2004-04-09 — Simon Willison (Open web) — Willison linked the site and encouraged readers to experiment with commands.

The full timeline, metrics and sources are on the case page, or via the Pro API (https://howitspread.com/developers).

Canonical URL: https://howitspread.com/cases/burger-king-subservient-chicken

Cite as: How It Spread (2026). “Burger King Subservient Chicken.” Case HIS-01072. Spread Score v1.2: 10/100. Updated 2026-10-17. https://howitspread.com/id/HIS-01072