White Castle hawks Chicken Rings in QVC-style Facebook Live event

To promote its latest finger food offering, Chicken Rings, slider joint White Castle staged an impressively authentic home shopping event on Facebook Live. Hosts Heather and Janelle--great improv actors, apparently--riffed for more than 40 minutes about the glories of a breaded circles of white meat chicken and four accompanying dipping sauces.

The stunt, created by Merkley + Partners and Washington Square Films, featured all the best tropes of worst kind of television. The overly perky presenters marveled at the low-low price of a dozen Chicken Rings. They made corny puns while asking for awkward close-ups of the merchandise and dropped dark hints about the glumness of their real lives.

The pair was helped along by a series of guests: Sarah the Chicken Ring model (she has two degrees and a stay-at-home husband), Doug the ring appraiser, creepy caller Nick and poor, lovestruck Dylan, who gets too eager and proposes to his girlfriend of a week using a handy snack.

Not all of the interactions were scripted. Heather and Janelle responded in real-time to comments from viewers on Facebook while White Castle's page sent out prize notifications in the feed. In all, the stream drew more than 50,000 viewers.