The Future of Advertising Explained via Burger King's Cannes Lions-winning campaigns

This is a paper I wrote for my Advertising class as part of my MSc. in Marketing at Trinity Business School, Dublin (2019-20).

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“It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we're legally allowed to take over our competitors.” — Bill Bernbach

The creative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s brought with it the crystallization and formalization of the advertising industry. The communication channels went through many iterations and continue to do so in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, however, the case for creativity in advertising remains central to its theories — its existence. 

In the case of Burger King, with Fernando Machado as the brand’s current Global Chief Marketing Officer, creativity is paramount to the organization’s advertising efforts. Infamous for its ‘burger wars’ with its competitor, McDonald’s, Burger King strives to use contagious creativity as its competitive advantage, in its advertising campaigns. Prior to Machado’s leadership, Burger King had its fair share of advertising duds, such as a Burger King commercial starring Aerosmith’s lead singer Steven Tyler, which was a classic case of resorting to hijacked advertising, wherein, any celebrity, with little to no connection to a brand’s ethos is used to promote the brand’s products. (Heineken Creative Ladder, 2015; Bridges, 2016, p.14). 

With Machado at the helm, however, the brand’s communication strategy underwent quite the transformation. Today, Burger King has one of the highest engagement rates of all fast food brands on Twitter. On its various social media platforms, the brand is playful in its communication, almost to the point of trolling its competitors, as it has adapted its messaging to capture Millennial and Gen Z online audiences, who have an affinity towards meme culture (Razzaque, 2016). This is best illustrated in Burger King’s “Whopper Detour” campaign created by advertising agency — FCB New York. According to Mary Meeker’s 2016 internet trends report, 93% of consumers consider using ad-blocking software and 47% of Internet users worldwide already use some kind of ad-blocking software today (Global Web Index, 2019). To make matters worse, according to SYNQ3 (2018), as of May 2017, 69% of consumers did not have a restaurant-specific app downloaded on their mobile phones. The final nail on the coffin was that the 7,200 Burger King stores were outnumbered 2 to 1 by McDonald’s’ 14,000 stores. In such a difficult climate, it seemed nearly insurmountable for Burger King to convince consumers not only to watch their ad, but to actually download their app. However, by injecting creative tension (De Wit & Meyer, 2010), and advertising theories of spin and seduction (Feldwick, 2015) into their campaign, Burger King was able to achieve and surpass its KPIs. Starting on December 4th, 2018, the campaign ran for 8 days allowing consumers to order Burger King’s signature Whopper “at” a McDonald’s for the price of 1 cent. This was made possible through the newly launched burger king app that geofenced (located) all McDonald’s and Burger King stores in the U.S. So, when Burger King app users came within 600 feet of a McDonald’s they were able to use the order head feature on the app and get convenient directions to the nearest Burger King — which was not inconvenient as most Burger King stores were within a mile of a McDonald’s. Hence, the consumer who had gone ‘the extra mile’ was rewarded with a penny-priced Whopper. 

To kickstart the campaign, one hour before going live, Burger King tweeted, “BRB going to McDonald’s.'' The communication channels Burger King selected, were a small number of print ads, guerrilla out-of-home photo opportunity frames for consumer selfies, and minimal paid digital spend to push the ad film onto social media platforms. The brand tactically opted out of traditional communication channels, such as TV and radio, and also decided not to leverage celebrities or social media influences. Burger King’s campaign channel selection is in line with the theory of the media multiplier effect which states that there are proven benefits to using multiple media channels (Analytic Partners, 2016; Snyder, 2016).

Guest speaker, Dowling (2019) the Strategic Director of Atomic Beta, in his theory of why results are measured, suggests that this is done in order to: find out what works, to acquire a budget, to justify advertising activities, to prove return on marketing investment (ROMI), and to shift perceptions. He also suggests that metrics fall within classes ranging from short-term to long-term results with real impact evidenced through customer and revenue growth. Both Dowling's theories have been further illustrated in Burger King’s “Whopper Detour” campaign results. The zero-based campaign budget (Byron, 2016) resulted in a 37:1 return on marketing investment according to Burger King’s internal data sources. As per App Annie’s data, Burger King’s app went from 464th place on the Google Play Store and 686th place on the Apple Store to 1st place on both Android and iOS app stores in under 48 hours. Cision and ABMC estimate that in just 9 days, 1.5 million people downloaded the app and 3.5 billion impressions were made with approximately $40 million dollars in earned media. As for the number of Whoppers sold because of the mobile app, according to Burger King’s internal data, the total sales value tripled during the campaign.

The programmatic ecosystem, as established by the Interactive Advertising Bureau of advertising (IAB), is vast and complex. Similarly, the marketing technology (MarTech) used in ensuring the “Whopper Detour” campaign ran smoothly, included the following technologies: ‘Tillster’ for app development, ‘Radar’ for geofencing, ‘Braze’ for CRM (Customer Relationship Management), ‘Amplitude’ for behaviour analytics calculations, ‘mParticle’ as the CDP (Customer Data Platform), and finally ‘Branch’ as a linking platform tool to make it easy to land on the Burger King app. 

Burger King’s campaign can be extrapolated to Yakob’s (2015) integrative brand-led planning model. Where the ‘action’ is to download the Burger King app, the ‘tool’ is the 1-cent Whopper burger, the ‘advertising’ is, “Whopper Detour” and the ‘content’ is in the form of user-generated content by consumers on their social media platforms partly enabled by the out-of-home photo opportunity frames. Yakob writes that successful advertising “often leverages existing referent systems by making our brain process information and link it to things already in our heads.” (2015). He goes on to say that rational messaging tends to have little effect on behaviour change and that emotional response is what affects behaviour, regardless of how it is produced. This is the big idea of Burger King’s “Whopper Detour” campaign that won them a Cannes Lions ‘Direct Grand Prix’ trophy in 2019. 

Burger King continues to push the envelope and is bold in its creative endeavours. For example, its most recent collaboration with Impossible Foods saw the release of the “Rebel Whopper' in Ireland on November 2019. It got the fairly conservative Irish palate to try a veggie burger disguised in clever copy by tasting a “0% beef, 100% Whopper” burger (get-to-by framework). Additionally, the Planning/Strategy Framework shows a changing consumer landscape where the deep human truth is that vegan diets are scientifically proven to be better for the environment and for one’s health. The problem identified is that consumers are forgoing the consumption of red meat and fast food hurting QSRs (Quick Service Restaurants) like Burger King in one fell swoop. Therefore, the challenge lies in reframing the communication which Burger King did and the “Rebel Burgers” have been one of the most successful Burger King launches in history, according to a spokesperson for the company. Another inspired Burger King campaign, was when Burger King’s began liking internet-famous personalities ' old tweets from 2010. This resulted in a high share of voice by a handful of influential social media stars, such as Casey Nietstat. This buzz lead to the announcement of Burger King's funnel cake fries — a throwback item that first appeared on the scene in 2010. 

As conversational marketing reaches its inflection point on the Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising (Gartner, 2019), Burger King already dabbled with the idea of voice search in a 2017 TV commercial broadcasting the line, “OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?”. This set off millions of google home appliances owned by homeowners to explain the value of the Whopper Burger from the Burger King Wikipedia. The goal of the advertisement was to expand its paltry 15-second slot, and that is what it accomplished. As a result, Burger King generated 10.5 billion impressions and $135 million in earned media. The campaign went on to win the 2017 Cannes Lions Grand Prix in the Direct category. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) ad formats continue to grow in popularity, and Burger adopted the format with its “Burn That Ad” campaign launched in Brazil. It allows consumers with the Burger King app to point to a competitor’s billboard and have it burst into digital flames.

The future of advertising most certainly implies the adoption of new mediums and channels, but brand value, experiences, and storytelling at their core will have to remain at a high standard for audiences to be truly inclined to want to engage with advertisements.

Acknowledgements: Advertising Professor and Founder of WeAreUp, Dave Tallon, and guest speaker Niall Dowling of Atomic Beta.

References:

Derck van Karnebeek, J. (2015). Winning in Premium by Integrating Marketing and Sales.

Bridges, C., 2016. In Your Creative Element: The Formula for Creative Success in Business. Kogan Page Publishers.

Razzaque, B. 2016. 4 Ways to Reach the New Millennial: Generation Z: 1-1.

Meeker, M., 2016. 2016 Internet Trends Report. Online], Retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/2016-internet-trends-report, p.117.

Globalwebindex.com. (2019). Global Ad-Blocking Behavior. [online] Available at: www.globalwebindex.com/hubfs/Downloads/Global_Ad-Blocking_Behavior.pdf

SYNQ3 (2018). The App-Athy Epidemic. [online] p.8. Available at: synq3.com/wp-content/uploads/SYNQ3_App-athy_WhitePage-12pmMar22.pdf.

De Wit, B. and Meyer, R., 2010. Strategy: process, content, context: an international perspective. Cengage Learning EMEA.

Feldwick, P., 2015. The anatomy of humbug: how to think differently about advertising. Troubador Publishing Ltd.

Snyder, J. (2016). How Advertising Works, Today. In: The Advertising Research Foundation. [online] p.16. Available at: oaaa.org/Portals/0/pdf/research/How-Advertising-Works-GTE-1-Main-Stage.pdf

Dowling, N. (2019). What are you measuring and why? Trinity Business School.

Sharp, B., 2016. How brands grow. Oxford University Press.

Yakob, F., 2015. Paid Attention: Innovative advertising for a digital world. Kogan Page Publishers.

McGuire, M. and Reid, C. (2019). Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing and Advertising, 2019. [online] Gartner. Available at: www.gartner.com/en/documents/3947399/hype-cycle-for-digital-marketing-and-advertising-2019