Episode 169 - Burger King Real Size Burger Reviewed by Haleon & eBay UK
Burger King pulled an out of home stunt with their campaign, “Real Size Burger,” which aims to make it clear how big their Mega Stackers really are.
But does it actually work or is it missing the point? The case study chosen for us this week by Contagious claims some serious results, but our guests questioned the original insights and had their own thoughts about improving this activation.
Tune in to see how Burger King should increase their creative effectiveness, with tips from Can Senses (MEA Media Manager at Haleon), Toby Foy (Head of Brand at eBay UK) and Grant McKenzie (former CMO at Asahi Group).
Episode 168 - Burger King Real Size Burger Reviewed by Haleon & eBay UK
Transcript
This is automatically generated, so it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the creative effectiveness adtech platform, and this is a show where brands watch other brands' ads. We are brought to you as ever by Contagious. Thank you so much for partnering with us, guys. And before we get to this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Can Senses 00:45
Hello, I'm Can Senses. I am Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, Oil, Health Category, Media Manager at Haleon.
Toby Foy 00:52
Toby Foy, I’m the Head of Brand of eBay UK.
Grant McKenzie 00:55
Grant McKenzie, former CMO at Asahi Group.
Tom Ollerton 00:58
So I need to say the obvious that this is a male only panel, and it does happen from time to time, but we also get female only panels from time to time. That is just how the cookie crumbles. This is absolutely not regular practice for us. We believe in getting all kinds of different folk on the platform, but we have a fantastic panel today! Even if they are all blokes, but I have very high expectations of your critique, fellas. So let's have a watch of this week's ad. So on the count of three, hold up the number of fingers for how good you think this is. One, two, three... So if anyone's done their homework on this and investigated the campaign into its wider context...
Can Senses 03:09
I really like it. So it's really product-oriented. In the past, BK always emphasize its product. Point of differentiation... Its size of the burgers in print ads as well, to disrupt the category. So I really appreciate this effort. And also what I really like it's... They learn from their mistakes. Right. So I think two years ago, BK faced the lawsuits about false advertising, right? Not showing the actual size of their burgers, right? So this time they are not lying. They are for real. They are honest. And we all know that honesty wins. And this time, BK’s honesty wins big time. There's a contrast like the product is like minuscule in this bigger format but the message is so strong and that, that contrast, it really gives a good creative touch which everyone can simply understand the message. So that's what I like in this campaign.
Grant McKenzie 04:15
Look, I think it's hard to come into a conversation about Burger King because there's baggage in the marketing community, right? So the elephant in the marketing conference room is these guys want to win awards. They do stunts. Some of them are quite interesting stunts. Some of them are horrible. But the deliberate attempt to win awards and be attractive to the marketing community as opposed to win with consumers. That being said, I didn't mind this one, and I think there are some parts of it which are quite interesting.
Toby Foy 04:44
I felt it was almost a campaign written for an award entry as opposed to anything else. I love the fact that Burger King have these open briefs that anyone globally can answer as long as it delivers against Flame-Grilled Whopper and this probably came from that. But again, I don't think this is necessarily the strongest example of that. I love the whole Burger King-McDonald's competitive angle with like PlayStation and Xbox. So I did like that part of it. I just didn't actually think it was the strongest execution of what they were trying to say. And the fact that they referenced some of the other brands doing these giant billboards and special builds to emphasize the burger, I actually think there are stronger way of delivering the message. I don't think creating a massive billboard where the copy is like as high as a building and then this tiny burger really lands the point particularly well.
Grant McKenzie 05:32
It looked like to really read it, you'd have to stand quite far away from it, you know, to really get it. Then to use the QR code, of course, you need to be right up against it. The thing about the data is I don't take it seriously because I can't, I can't as a marketer, see all the sources. So what else is going on at that time? You know, increased compared to what? Just as a campaign, did it... Is it nice? I thought it was kind of interesting, but not “Wow!” I did wonder if this was a consumer insight. You know, the size of the burger is critical or whether it's more like an industry thing, you know, they're all worried because there was a class action lawsuit against them. One of the critiques you could make of Burger King, well, I'll make of Burger King is consistency. So they have these individual, let's call them campaigns or stunts, however you want to look at it. So one of them is... I don't know about the size of Stackers. Are they trying to sell more Stackers? I don't know. The other one is about a Whopper, and the other one is about something else. Does it all link together? Is it all a consistent idea or is it a series of tactical, you know, short term sales driving activities? And I don't know because I haven’t got the data, but it feels more like that to me than some of the other competitors in this segment who focus on, you know, long term brand development, the fundamentals of marketing, you know. So placement, where are these? I assume these places... These billboards were near restaurants. Let's hope so, because every time it seems like there's something else they're advertising.
Can Senses 06:29
It definitely seems a short term activation, sales activation. And definitely they should focus more on brand building campaigns along with these short term activations. If I would like to sign off this campaign, I'd probably try to add something like a comparison with competitors' burger size like this is six inch bigger or like something like that, right? So to, to better understand how big these Mega Stackers are.
Tom Ollerton 07:26
What would be the one thing you need to change about this just to make this do a better job?
Toby Foy 07:32
I mean, if there was genuinely like quite a good incentive attached to that QR code and these numbers are legit attached to this, maybe it's quite a nice way of getting people to take notice of a burger product launch. If you drive past that, you won't even see the burger, let alone resonate. If they're insistent on landing this message, I would have probably picked a different medium. A different channel that allowed them to better show what is a unnecessarily big burger but that more people could appreciate the size of it. So I don't know whether there’s an applicable channel there or some digital or social formats that maybe could bring the burger to scale in a way that's a bit more impactful for me. It's completely lost. It looks like a tiny burger.
Can Senses 08:13
If this out of home is the is the main channel, we should definitely surround it with others channels, especially like digital and probably I would argue that to add a much more shareable call to, call to action or content to extend the reach to the wider audiences. Because QR code, you can scan it, you can share it or whatever. But definitely that campaign needs to justify its actual reach.
Tom Ollerton 08:45
Right... So we’re coming to the end of it now. Thumbs up or down, would you sign this campaign off in its current form? Yes or no? One, two, three... Right guys, thank you so much. We'll see you all next episode.
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