BLACK FRIDAY WHOPPER SHOPPER

TitleBLACK FRIDAY WHOPPER SHOPPER
BrandBURGER KING CORPORATION
Product/ServiceWHOPPER
Category A02. Applied Innovation
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 Innovation?

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 innovatively 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 by putting a new twist on an existing technology: banners.

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. We took inspiration from the yearly upsurge in online banner advertising that accompanies Black Friday every year, and challenged ourselves to make it a force for good.

Describe the idea

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.

What were the key dates in the development process?

From receiving a ‘go’ from our client in late September, we needed to develop the Black Friday Whopper Shopper website and set a legal framework in place. This was achieved by the 15.11.18. The website ran until the 26.11.18 to encompass the period in which Black Friday buzz is at its peak. In the weeks following the promotion shoppers received WHOPPER vouchers, courtesy of some of their favourite brands.

Describe the innovation / technology

Banners are a topic we are all intimately familiar. In fact, it’s easy to overlook as people who design and sell banners that there is a transaction behind banner clicks. Every time someone clicks on a banner and makes a subsequent purchase, the website that hosts the banner gets a percentage of the cost. This is an oversimplification but a key factor of affiliate marketing for our purpose. Our website played on this system to trick big brands into paying for WHOPPERS. Every time a Black Friday shopper made a purchase through our website, we got paid a percentage. We then refunded that percentage in the form of WHOPPER vouchers. Turning annoying banners, into the best Black Friday deal ever.

Describe the expectations / outcome

The Black Friday Whopper Shopper was designed as a seasonal promotion and so had no long term effect beyond building brand-love for BURGER KING as the brand that helped people to get the best Black Friday Deal ever: free WHOPPERS. The system that used banners to trick big brands into paying for people’s WHOPPER, was a proof of concept and may re-emerge in partnership with franchise holders at some point in the future. Other results include international news coverage (Financial Times, Fox News, ABC News, Teen Vogue, Thrillist, Elite Daily etc.) 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.