Burger King: Hacked to Hero
It’s been an interesting week – to say the least – for @burgerking and @jeep. Both accounts were hacked for an extended period of time by the Internet hactivist group, Anonymous.
Burger King’s account was hijacked around 9am PST on Monday, February 18th, as Twitter users noticed the image header replaced by a McDonalds Chicken McNugget image, change in profile name, and strange texts announcing Burger King was sold to McDonalds due to failure of Whopper sales. After the account was suspended by Twitter until Burger King could regain access and control of their account, they quickly worked to reverse any negative affects the account seizure occurred.
What Did the Burger King Hack Teach Us:
Mistakes are often our greatest teachers. Failure to learn from them, or the mistakes of others, only sets us up for a repeat. Burger King has done a marvelous job in avoiding a PR nightmare and turning a hack into a heroic victory.
When not in control, get it back
It took about three hours for Burger King to regain control of their Twitter account. That may seem like a long time, but when your account is hijacked and passwords, emails, and names are changed, it can take quite some time to get Twitter to work with you to get access back
Make light of a bad situation with some humor
There was nothing Burger King or Jeep could do about the hacking except move on, so they had a good laugh sympathizing with each other and welcoming followers back.
.@jeep Glad everything is back to normal.
— BurgerKing (@BurgerKing) February 19, 2013
.@burgerking Thanks BK. Let us know if you want to grab a burger and swap stories – we’ll drive.
— Jeep (@Jeep) February 20, 2013
Don’t repeat the joke once the punch line was delivered
Unless you’re a three year old with an adorable voice, nobody likes hearing a joke a second time right after they already laughed at it. MTV and BET tried recreating the PR success Burger King was benefiting from by “hijacking” each other’s accounts and promoting the other channel’s TV shows and upcoming events.
Twitter users quickly caught on to the hoax and did not respond kindly. Denny’s Diner played off it well poking fun at MTV’s hijack fail with this response: 
If we learned anything from Burger King or Oreo during the Super Bowl, respond to negative situations with humor, quick action, and value to your customers
Hacked to Hero
Since the account was hijacked, Burger King has not only benefited from extensive media reports, but they’ve seen over 40,000 new Twitter followers! The social media world responded gracefully to Burger King and laughed with them at the unfortunate turn of events. Burger King’s official response was calling it an “interesting day” and hoped their new followers would “stick around.” Something tells us they’re not going anywhere as The King probably has some new tricks up his sleeve to excite the fans.
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Then, take extra care in handling your accounts. Hackers are really made to be our rivals and enemies when it comes to internet working.
At least, all things went back to normal. Lessons learned then..