2019 Brand Experience & Activation

BLACK FRIDAY WHOPPER SHOPPER

Short List
TitleBLACK FRIDAY WHOPPER SHOPPER
BrandBURGER KING CORPORATION
Product/ServiceWHOPPER
Category A04. Travel, Leisure, Retail, Restaurants & Fast Food Chains
Entrant GRABARZ & PARTNER Hamburg, GERMANY
Idea Creation GRABARZ & PARTNER Hamburg, GERMANY
PR ALISON BROD MARKETING + COMMUNICATIONS New York, USA
Production RABBICORN FILMS Hamburg, GERMANY
Production 2 MITK ▽ MOTION IS THE KEY Hamburg, GERMANY
Production 3 SLAUGHTERHOUSE VISUAL MANUFACTURING Hamburg, GERMANY
Additional Company BURGER KING Miami, USA
Additional Company 2 BURGER KING DEUTSCHLAND GMBH Hannover, GERMANY
Additional Company 3 RELEVANT REWARDING Harderwijk, THE NETHERLANDS
Credits
Name Company Position
Felix Fenz Grabarz & Partner Chief Creative Officer
Tobias Ahrens Grabarz & Partner Group CD
Matthias Preuss Grabarz & Partner Creative Director
Jakob Eckstein Grabarz & Partner Creative Director
Alessandro Perri Grabarz & Partner Art Director
Erwin Lorenz Grabarz & Partner Art Director
Andrew McEvoy Grabarz & Partner Copywriter
Gabriela van der Linden Grabarz & Partner Copywriter
Tim Mangels Grabarz & Partner Account Manager
Irene Aniteye Grabarz & Partner Planner
Aleksandr Bobrov Grabarz & Partner Graphic Designer
Fernando Machado Burger King Corporation Global Chief Marketing Officer
Marcelo Pascoa Burger King Corporation Global Head of Brand Marketing
Rogelio Magana Burger King Corporation Senior Brand Manager, Global Marketing
Klaus Schmäing Burger King Deutschland GmbH Director Marketing Germany
Benedikt Lemsky Burger King Deutschland GmbH Head of Marketing Communications Germany
- - Alison Brod Marketing + Communications PR Agency
- - RABBICORN FILMS GmbH Film Production
- - Relevant Rewarding B.V. Website setup & technical support
- - MITK ▽ MOTION IS THE KEY Post Production
- - Slaughterhouse GmbH Post Production

Why is this work relevant for Brand Experience & Activation?

During Black Friday (15.11.18-26.11.18), the biggest shopping occasion of the year, we released WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com, a BURGER KING branded shopping experience that rewarded Black Friday shoppers with free WHOPPERS. Though, in keeping with BURGER KING’s ‘Hacktivising’ approach, we didn’t pay for these WHOPPERS. We tricked 1400 of the biggest brands into paying for them instead.

background

In the United States, where our campaign took place, Black Friday is the biggest shopping occasion of the year. Brands spend around 6$ Billion dollars on attracting customers and typically, fashion and tech retailers dominate the conversation. Our brief was to make BURGER KING relevant on Black Friday and drive Black Friday shoppers in-store when millions of people are switching to online-purchasing. Our secondary objective, was to build on love and awareness of our most iconic product, the delicious flame-grilled WHOPPER.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

Black-Friday’s about finding deals. And what better deal could BURGER KING offer than the WHOPPER, for free! Even better? Using the online ad-budgets of 1400 other brands to pay for them. We found a new way to hack the affiliate marketing banners of these brands, to make them pay for WHOPPERS. Shoppers just had to do their regular Black Friday shopping through our branded website: WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

How do you make a Burger retailer relevant on Black Friday? Yes, it’s one of the biggest retail occasions of the year. But the stars of the show are usually tech and fashion brands. Not restaurants, and certainly not Burger brands! Even worse, most of the shopping that happens online. So we designed WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com as a shopping website that rewarded shopping with WHOPPER vouchers. The twist, we got 1400 other brands to pay for those WHOPPERS through affiliate marketing. We targeted our audience of Black Friday Shoppers and Whopper-Lovers with posts on social media and led them to our website during the busiest shopping event of the year – Black Friday (15.11.18-26.11.18), when buzz was highest. After the promotion ended, they received WHOPPER vouchers, courtesy of some of their favourite brands. These vouchers in turn drove them in store.

Describe the execution (30% of vote)

WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com was a BURGER KING branded shopping website with a clever twist. It was filled with banners representing over 1400 of the biggest brands. Whenever someone clicked a banner to do their Black Friday shopping through the WHOPPER-SHOPPER.COM website, brands paid us money from their online media budgets through the affiliate marketing process. We then refunded that money back to Black Friday Shoppers as WHOPPER vouchers. To participate, all they had to do was create an account and do their usual Black Friday shopping.

List the results (30% of vote)

We built brand-love for BURGER KING as the brand that helped people to get the best Black Friday Deal ever: free WHOPPERS. News channels (Financial Times, Fox News, ABC News, Teen Vogue, Thrillist, Elite Daily etc.) were quick to pick up the idea. Helping us raise brand buzz around the brand an incredible 29% during the Black Friday period. And we reached nearly 300 Million people, despite spending nothing on media. In addition, as all the ‘generous’ brands paid full price for WHOPPERS, our campaign actually ended up making a profit on every WHOPPER we gave away.