Title	KING OF UMARELLS
Brand	BURGER KING ITALY
Product/Service	BURGER KING RESTAURANTS
Category	A12. Social Brand Experience
Entrant	THE BIG NOW Milan, ITALY
Idea Creation	THE BIG NOW Milan, ITALY
Production	TAPELESSFILM Milan, ITALY

Name	Company	Position
Stefano Morelli	The Big Now	Creative Director
Paolo Platania	The Big Now	Copywriter
Tania Loschi	The Big Now	Copywriter
Jacob Salmona Arcari	The Big Now	Copywriter
Alessandro Bigi	The Big Now	Art Director
Davide Bodano	The Big Now	Art Director
Giacomo Putignano	The Big Now	Art Director
Alice Boss	The Big Now	Social Media Specialist
Andrea Fusco	The Big Now	Content Editor
Alberto Rech	The Big Now	Account Manager
Beppe Tufarulo	TapelessFilm	Film Director
Daniele Gentili	TapelessFilm	Film Producer
Jesús Cubero	Burger King Restaurants Italy	Director of Marketing and Communication BK SEE
Ilaria Abrate	Burger King Restaurants Italy	Head of Marketing and Communication Italy
Andrea Bomentre	Burger King Restaurants Italy	Communication team Burger King Italy
Simon Tokatzian	Burger King Restaurants Italy	Communication team Burger King Italy
	Equipe International	PR Agency

The Campaign

The idea came seizing a rapidly rising phenomenon typically Italian: the Umarells. "Umarells" is a slang word used to describe elderly retirees who love to spend their free time – which is a lot – watching construction sites, dispensing advice that no one listens to. They are a lot, they are funny, they are a trend topic online. Through a carefully targeted campaign, BK recruited 5 “Kings of Umarells” to supervise its construction sites. They become heroes of a social video which, in a short time, has aroused the interest of public opinion, creating focus on new openings restaurants even before actually they came to open.

Creative Execution

We started off based on a growing, heartfelt sentiment in order to craft a multimedia campaign able to grab the attention of a younger audience by getting in touch with their emotions through an unexpected approach. The recruiting of the protagonists (the friendly Umarells) in itself, enabled us to play with the topic, monitoring elderly men's “social networks”: crosswords magazines, church notice boards and so on. The five selected Umarells became the main characters of a viral video which, starting from social networks, attracted the attention and the warmth of a vast audience ending up on different channels.

In the first week, on the Burger’s King facebook page the video made more than 3 million views, 15 million impressions, 18.000 interactions with 98% positive sentiment. The social campaign’s video appeared on the most important Italian newspapers, blogs, radio and TV shows, reaching more than 6 million people who talked about Burger King and its new restaurants before they even opened. After a few days, also the italian ‘The Simpson’s’ Facebook page mentions #KingofUmarells and jokes with campaign. The total media equivalent reached organically was € 1.508.123.

We decided to ride a strong local trending topic, able to entertain Italians, make them smile and give them something to think about. The issue of pensions in Italy is a very sensitive socially, and umarells represent a positive and upbeat topic. So the narrative level of the umarells story was very effective and we have decided to tie it to a brand able to use them in a witty and cool way.

Burger King is currently present with only 143 restaurants in Italy. We decided to create a campaign strongly engaging for the Burger King’s target with a relevant content which could talk about our values: honesty, authenticity, unpretentiousness. The opening of new 300 restaurants became for us the welcome opportunity to experience our “welcome everyone” attitude, before the opening itself, creating expectations and word of mouth. With us what you see is what you get, so the easiest thing to do was simply let people experience through social media what we were doing: new construction sites opening for our passionate fans.