BBH has been in partnership with Burger King since 2017 and when we took over their brand-focused remit, they had not run a brand campaign for 9 years. They had focused on new products and discounts. As a result, the brand and business were in a sorry state. Sales were declining, the gap with competitors was increasing, and we had a generation of fast food fans that didn’t know or care about us. We set out to rebuild the brand in the UK, giving pride back to franchisees and ultimately sell Whoppers. This is the first chapter of a brand turnaround story, showing how celebrating the Whopper has started to show impact, and return the Burger King brand to glory.

On one side, the plucky underdog Burger King. On the other, McDonald’s, a behemoth whose advertising arsenal is the size of a small nation's GDP. Burger King’s biggest strength was their pride and joy ‘big burger’, the Whopper. It was, according to its tagline, the ‘Home of the Whopper’, but 67% of people in the UK didn’t know what a Whopper was.

Before we’d go on to fight the big guys, we first had to familiarise the younger generation with the term ‘Whopper’. Once that was done, our second challenge was convincing the public to choose Burger King instead of its competitors, and most importantly, to buy more Whoppers.

The Whopper has many strengths, it has its distinctive flame-grilled flavour, it’s freshly made to order, BUT it’s also a proper two-handed eat. It’s massive. In fact, despite the Big Mac’s best efforts, it’s 50% smaller than The Whopper. 

We decided to announce this, in the simplest way; a product demo. In every shoot for 12 months, we hid a Big Mac behind our Whopper, and then revealed it all at the end of the year, with a tongue in cheek film, taking a friendly dig at our competitor, and showing when it comes to size, there’s only one Whopper. That gave us confidence in our fighter and we didn’t play it safe. This is what happened, blow-by-blow.

Round 1: Go Whopper or Go Home

For one day only, we served nothing but Whoppers. Customers had no choice but in a good way.

On top of that, we gave away free Whoppers to anyone who downloaded the Burger King app. And on TV, our spots featured customers being shunned for daring to ask for a ‘cheeseburger’ at the Home of the Whopper.

Round 2: The Whopper on a Bus

We drove around Westminster in a double-decker bus with a line that didn’t hold back any punches plastered on its side.

Round 3: The Whopper of a Secret

At the end of the year, we went for the jugular and revealed the Whopper of a Secret. From print to TV, OOH and in-store advertising, we’d hidden a ‘Big’ Mac behind every single Whopper shot.

Results:

-We sparked global media attention and got half a billion eyeballs on the ads.

-BK’s app was #1 in the app store.

-50,000 people went to Burger King’s website in one day, that’s 70 people/minute.

-People were talking about the Whopper Bus in 75 countries.

-34% uplift in Whopper mentions.

14 pieces of coverage in total with a reach of 192,326,435 – 4 nationals, 8 regionals and 2 consumer titles.

Our work was talked about in 66 countries.