Words by Theda Braddock
Fernando Machado strolls about Cannes like he owns the place. Not in an arrogant way, but I wouldn’t blame him if he did; he’s certainly earned it. The Burger King CMO’s Lion tally might just be longer than Trump’s Twitter history.
The darling of this year’s festival was another ingenious idea from the brand, the Whopper Detour, which picked up Titanium, Mobile and Direct Grand Prix, as well as a string of others. If you haven’t heard of the Whopper Detour, well, I’m not sure where you’ve been for the last 6 months, but I’ll explain.
Late last year the fast food chain was looking for a way to call attention to their re-vamped app, which now allowed users to order ahead. The operation they came up with was an unabashed trolling of their chief competitor, McDonald’s, which had twice as many locations in the U.S. During the 9-day operation, anyone who opened the new Burger King app within 600 ft. of a McDonald’s (or better yet, inside), received a coupon for a $0.01 Whopper.
The idea was thought up by the creative wizards at FCB New York and CCO Gabriel Schmitt was on hand to explain the idea’s origins at a number of panels and in an interview with the Cannes Lions team. It all started with a think tank session with waze where they were brainstorming QSR ideas. Realizing that McDonald’s had 14K+ locations to their 7K+, they recognized that customers had to drive further to find a Burger King, so what if there was a way to make it worth it? What if they could order a Whopper at McDonald’s?
When Schmitt called up Machado to pitch the idea he knew the CMO had a few rules, but he also knew the idea would work. It wasn’t a one-off, it fit in with Burger King’s series of campaigns, it had specific goals, to drive app downloads and usage, and it was a simple idea but was difficult to pull off technologically (and legally). That being said Machado didn’t’ necessarily take to the idea at first, challenging them to make it sharper and, as Schmitt related, told them it was doable “if this can have more voltage”, an apparently characteristic phrase for the CMO.
And that’s just what the team did, finally succeeding in getting Machado to come in to hear the re-worked idea in person. Schmitt was immediately disheartened. Machado listened for a few seconds then tuned out, ignoring what was going on around to focus on his phone. As it turns out the CMO was firing off text messages to his tech director telling him the idea was an “atomic bomb” and that he needed to get there asap so they could start working it. By the time the 2nd presentation rolled around, the idea was set: what if we created a Whopper you could only order at McDonald’s?
The operation they began planning had to meet Machado’s goals for every campaign – it had to deliver results, real results. KPIs need to be fixed beforehand and everything must be done with the goal of meeting them. Schmitt acknowledges the thoughtpoints around the operation weren’t anything special by themselves but were designed to leverage the promotion and the pre-determined KPIs, focused on elevating the number of app downloads. It did. The application shot from the 686th place in the app store, to number 1 in just 48 hours, with 1.5M downloads.
The biggest hurdle the team had to overcome was the legality of the whole operation. When you’re trolling your chief rival, there are a lot of risks involved. According to Schmitt, they had around 45 meetings to discuss legal implications – to make sure they weren’t at risk for lawsuits brought on by McDonald’s and ensure they properly protected the identities of the employees in the promotional film which showed actors trying to order Whoppers in actual McDonald’s stores with real employees. Burger King didn’t want to get them into trouble either – “we wanted to be smart asses but not assholes,” Schmitt explains.
One year on, legal, technical and production risks resolved, the operation launched to mass media coverage, ultimately earning 3.3. billion impressions, the equivalent of $37M in earned media. But was it a success? Did it meet the KPIs? Initially, it didn’t seem so. Schmitt recalls a phone call he got from the client on the operation’s first day: “look, we’re super happy with everyone. We’ve got good traction, it’s going viral, a lot of people are talking about it but unfortunately we are not really sure about the results yet because it seems like there’s a glitch in the app store… we’ve got 500,000 downloads in 5 hours.” Thankfully, it wasn’t just a glitch, the operation had wildly surpassed expectations.
Whopper Detour works so well because it was such an innovative way to introduce something simple. Schmitt acknowledges that when it came to mobile ordering, Burger King was late to the game, but that it was time to get in – mobile-ordering is the future of QSR, set to become a $38B industry next year. Its results are staggering yet also not entirely unexpected when you realize how every step was taken with the intention of meeting pre-defined expectations. Schmitt explains that they were after an idea that was a breakthrough from a creative standpoint but that truly brought results.
“We don’t want to do only things that bring business results but are boring, or not relevant, or that people can’t relate to, on the one hand. But on the other hand, doing things that are only creative for creativity’s sake’s doesn’t really make sense. We’re in a business and that’s what we tell all our clients. Whatever the KPI is, we want to go and ace these KPI”
About the Contributor
Theda Braddock is an American who lives and works in Paris. She helps agencies develop their communication and promote creativity, and writes for several publications when she has time.
