How Burger King Is Disrupting The Market With Its Creative Campaigns - A Case Study

8 mins read

Proudly adorning the fifth place in the world's largest fast-food restaurant chains, Burger King is a crowd puller and holds a special place in the hearts and tummies of many. In news for the much-awaited IPO which is all set to hit the market on 2nd December 2020, the company has hit the popularity button yet again! 

The shares of the company will be listed on BSE and NSE and the last date for subscription in Burger King’s IPO is 4th December. The price band for the IPO is set at INR 59-60 per share and investors need to subscribe to a minimum of 250 shares which makes one lot. A maximum of 3,250 shares can be bid by a retail individual investor. 

Headquartered in Miami-Dade County, the American-origin multinational chain of hamburger fast-food restaurants is known to step into uncharted waters time and again, to explore newer horizons. And with the recent announcement of its IPO opening, Burger King looks ready to step into unmapped territories yet again. 

The turbulent journey

All that glitters at Burger King today is gold, but none of this happened in a day. The restaurant company that today boasts of having 18,838 stores in nearly 100 countries, started with one, in the year 1953 as Insta-Burger King. Later purchased by two Miami-based franchisees James McLamore and David Edgerton in 1954, the company got re-christened as Burger King. 

In the years to follow, the company changed hands four times and it was only its third set of owners, a partnership of Bain Capital, TPG Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, who decided to take it public in the year 2002. In late 2010, a majority stake in the company was acquired by 3G Capital of Brazil.  

The new owners initiated a quick restructuring of the company in order to reverse its fortunes. Eventually, the partners 3G and Berkshire Hathaway merged the company with the famous Canadian doughnut chain Tim Hortons, with the support of a new Canada-based parent company called Restaurant Brands International. 

The evolution of Burger King’s marketing strategies

The company’s advertising strategies witnessed a golden era in the 1970s but they failed to appease people in the early 1980s. A series of campaigns were created in the next two decades by a number of advertising agencies but none of them turned out to be successful. Shortly after Burger King was acquired by TPG Capital, L.P. in 2002, the new CEO of the company Brad Blum decided to turn around the fortunes of the famous hamburger fast food restaurant. 

In an attempt to overhaul its failing advertising programs, the company first reinstated the popular “Have it your way” slogan as its corporate motto. It then handed over its leash to a new Miami-based advertising agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky (abbreviated as CP+B). CP+B was famous for using a subversive tack when creating campaigns for clients which was exactly what the company needed. Accompanied by an all-new presence online, the new advertising campaigns centered around a redesigned Burger King character which was nicknamed “The King”. 

With the recession hitting in the late 2000s and affecting the 18-35 demographic, the ones targetted by the CP+B created ads, the company witnessed a decline in the market share, rapidly moving into the red. Later, when 3G Capital took the reins of the company in 2011, Burger King terminated its seven-year-long relationship with CP+B and hired a rival firm called McGarryBowen.   

The new product-oriented campaign expanded the targetted demographic segment of the society and eliminated the use of Burger King in the advertising programs of the company, replacing it with a new program that focused on food and ingredients.    

The 'King' of creativity

When we talk of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, Burger King rules the market like a boss. The way its business functions in the fast-food segment of the industry, it believes in the fact that creativity has the power to make marketing strategies more efficient and effective. To make that happen, Burger King not only looks for innovative ideas within its own agencies but also goes beyond the boundaries to look outside its sector and other agencies to engage consumers. 

In an interview, Burger King’s UK marketing director Katie Evans said that if customers are able to engage with an idea in the right way, it helps position the message and engage the audiences that they want to speak to. This is also what makes the campaign much more disruptive, much more memorable, and helps in connecting with consumers on a whole new level. She also goes on to say that we are talking to ourselves if we look at only our own sector.

The delivery battleground

A major chunk of Burger King’s marketing strategy has been focused on driving app downloads that link creative campaigns to its mobile platform that helps them meet growing consumer demand for convenience via technology. The company centered its 2019 strategy around app downloads and started running campaigns that required smartphones, making its app stickier for frequent and repeat users. 

This reflects how a mobile-first mindset and strategy can help marketers in creatively cut through the clutter of one-time stunts and traditional ads. Numerous app-powered marketing campaigns like “Whopper Detour” and “EscapeTheClown” tapped geolocation and included personalized messaging by targeting consumers on the basis of their physical location. 

In fact, several delivery stunts by the company last year reinstated its focus on delivery-related campaigns. In May 2019, the fast-food chain tested a program that delivered food to motorists stuck in the traffic of Mexico City. The campaign called "Traffic Jam Whopper" allowed drivers to order from the Burger King app and get their food items delivered to their car by motorbike. This sparked a 63% jump in terms of delivery orders in the very first week and a 44-fold surge in the overall app downloads.

Out-of-the-box campaigns

Over the years, Burger King has become known for the use of provocative tone, unflinching social commentary, and leaving no opportunity to publicly grill its competitors. From “Scary Clown Night” which offered a free Whopper to any and everyone dressed as a clown on Halloween to its “Whopper Detour” initiative that encouraged app users to visit a nearby McDonald’s to unlock a Whopper, the company’s tactics have been bold and daring. 

One such campaign launched by the burger company was “Whopper Secret” which amplified its rivalry with McDonald’s when it positioned its Whopper burger as the bigger and better option in comparison to McDonald’s Big Mac burger. The Whopper Secret said that there was a Big Mac concealed behind every Whopper that appeared in Burger King ads that year but due to its superior size, all Big Macs were eclipsed from sight. 

Another similar ad campaign initiated by the fast-food chain in Brazil was called “Burn that Ad”. Anyone who launched the Burger King app and pointed it in the direction of its competitors’ ads could see the ad burn instantly, in virtual reality, of course, and turn into a Burger King ad. With the flames burnt away, the customer is left with a screen that reveals they’ve earned a free Whopper that they can savor at the nearest restaurant. 

The path forward

Where a global pandemic has disrupted the workings of the food industry all over the world, Burger King has learnt to hang in there by getting more organized with respect to its agendas and more structured in terms of its strategies. 

Burger King is building the right capabilities and embracing the digital landscape, thus, blending the "old" and "new" realities. Moreover, the company is following the trends in the QSR (Quick Service Restaurant) industry, keeping an eye on what consumers would expect from Burger King restaurants in the future. 

On these lines, Fernando Machado, CMO of Restaurant Brands International and Burger King, mentioned that the team at Burger King aims to adopt better ways of working, more empathy with each other and with different personal situations, and more flexibility with the ways of working in the days, months and years ahead. He also added that he believes that there will be a silver lining in the ways of working which will turn out to be beneficial for everyone in the long run.