New community site MyBrandz has caught plenty of consumer interest with its premise of bringing together fans to share their love of their favorite brands, including those of quick-service restaurants. In its latest effort, the site is leveraging the popularity of Chatroulette, a website that pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations.
MyBrandz hosted a McDonald's vs. Burger King Chatroulette smack down to see which brand consumers chose to connect with most.
While the results were close, MyBrandz reports Ronald McDonald averaged longer conversations — 3.2 minutes — than Burger King's 2.3 minute average. The purpose of the experiment was to see how consumers would react to a face-to-face encounter with their favorite pop-culture fast food icons, since it's only a matter of time until companies will start using this medium to reach consumers.
Masquerading as Ronald McDonald and the Burger King, members of the MyBrandz team attempted to hold conversations with users all over the world. The mascot holding the longest average conversation over a seven-hour period won.
"The longest conversation lasted 18 minutes and 36 seconds and was between Ronald McDonald and a female consumer," said Eran Gefen, MyBrandz CEO. "As can be expected, when using Chatroulette, the experiment generated responses ranging from funny to bizarre — by the end of one conversation, the consumer admitted to getting over her fear of clowns."
McDonald's also "won" on the most number of "brand takeover" entrants. As of this morning, 79 percent of MyBrandz members had joined the McDonald's community in order to takeover the Burger King brand. Burger King had 21 percent join its camp.
MyBrandz also allows fans to connect to the fan page of their favorite company, where they can share notes, photos, video, and links with like-minded fans. Just as FourSquare offers honor its members with the title of mayor, MyBrandz is inviting its members to "own" their brand. As part of its Sharez contest, the site will award the most loyal brand fan a stock certificate in their favorite company.
During the contest period, users are invited to post original content to prove they are a brand's most loyal fan. Other users award hearts to their favorite content, and the first user to 50 hearts wins a stock certificate.
The site also tracks the brands receiving the most traffic and comments on the site. Top brands for the week include Starbucks and Coca-Cola.
