Inventive staff: How Burger King's award-winning work comes about
Food advertising is usually aimed at keeping people's mouth watering. This year, however, Burger King went against the grain and opted for a wholeheartedly repulsive approach to showcasing its most iconic burger. The Moldy Whopper ad campaign is designed to promote fresh food by showing exactly what happens to a Whopper that has no artificial preservatives in the course of a month.
The upset stomach campaign made headlines and helped Burger King win the award show. It took first place in the Clios, One Show, D&AD and, for those who are skeptical of its effectiveness, the Effie Awards. For the idea to work, the product had to keep the promise. When the Miami arm of global agency David came up with the concept a few years ago, Burger King had to put the brakes on while adjusting the burger.
“We decided at this point not to pursue this any further as we still had a long way to go to remove the products on the product side and remove ingredients from artificial sources. We've already done this job and that's why they came up with the idea, but we were still a long way from the journey, ”explains Fernando Machado, who oversees Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes as Global Chief Marketing Officer at RBI.
It just so happened that Swedish agency Ingo came up with a similar idea to show how the Whopper decomposes, and since Machado is part of the WPP network like David, he brought Ingo into the mix. While the product was still being worked on, another agency – Publicis – came up with another similar campaign idea to Burger King and joined the party. The rest is history.
"I love the fact that all agencies put brand first," says Machado. "In a world that can become very political and competitive, Ingo, Publicis and David only wanted to do the best for the brand." The three agencies stayed in close touch long after the project was completed, including celebrating the (fairly constant) stream of prize wins in group chats.
Above: Scary Clown Night print ad by Lola MullenLowe, captured by Ale Burset. Above: Moldy Whopper print ad by David Miami, Ingo and Publicis