2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

When the temperature in Kuwait was soaring, but the consumers' interest & engagement with Burger King was declining, we decided to tap into the brand's core: Flame - Grilling. We created the world's first Sun Flame - Grilled Whopper and gave the ultimate flame grilling experience to the consumers in a unique & entertaining way. The real test of entertainment is whether it makes people talk about it or not. The tremendous engagement our content generated on social, online & even traditional media clearly indicates that brand experiences can be truly entertaining as well.

Background.

The 2018 summers were a challenging one for Burger King Kuwait. With temperatures soaring above 50ºC, many people had left the country and those who stayed preferred to stay indoors. After a period of heavy eating during Ramadan, many of the consumers don't easily get interested in fast food. So, the interest in the brand and the engagement with it declined and there was no news to give till September '18. The brand wanted to do something that would spike the consumers' interest and make them proactively engage with the brand. But, with the marketing budget for this period being 70% lesser than usual, we knew it was difficult to find our way into the minds of the already less – interested consumers. To generate strong buzz, engagement with significant reach, we needed an idea that would garner fame and attention beyond what could be paid for.

Describe the creative idea.

With summer temperatures going beyond 50º C, Kuwait is known to be the hottest place on Earth. But the people of Kuwait have kind of a love – hate relationship with summer. While they don’t really enjoy being in the weather, they secretly enjoy talking about the infamous ‘hottest place’ tag for the country. The Sun really becomes the centre of their universe! Almost all the conversations revolve around the Sun, its wrath & fury in Kuwait. So how could we make Burger King gain the consumers attention when all they were interested in was talking about the Sun? Instead of trying to fight the Sun, we decided to partner it by leveraging the one brand truth that sets Burger King apart from its competitors: Flame - Grilling! Presenting the world's first Sun Flame – Grilled Whopper: The iconic Whopper flame – grilled by the Sun!

Describe the strategy

While fast food appeals to a wide age – band of consumers, we decided to focus on the 18 – 35 year olds. Mainly because: 1. It represents the core demographic for Burger fast food category 2. Burger King attracted lesser number of consumers from this age band and more from the higher age band despite not targeting that segment. We took this as an opportunity to engage with the younger audience. Our research pointed that for this audience, Entertaining, talk-worthy content = cool brand. We needed to do something that'd make them talk about Burger King. So we planned our idea as a unique brand experience that would be executed as a surprise activation. This way, we would not only be able to engage with our consumers in - store but would also be able to leverage their experience to create entertaining & news - worthy content.

Describe the execution

We created a solar machine (in partnership with SolSourceTM) that harnesses the power of the Sun’s rays to create the ultimate flame – grill experience. On 22nd July 2018, one of the hottest days in 2018, when the temperature touched 50°C, Burger King Kuwait surprised the consumers at one of its flagship stores by serving the 100% Sun Flame – Grilled Whopper sandwiches. The whole experience right from the consumers’ surprise on hearing about the new sandwich, the Whopper being Sun flame – grilled to the initially skeptical consumers’ enjoying the world's first and only Sun flame - grilled Whopper was recorded and we created engaging content from it. On 23rd & 24th July, the video content was posted on the brand's social media channels. We partnered with 2 popular 'newscaster' influencers to amplify the reach. There was no media money that was spent to push the content.

Describe the outcome

The news of the Sun Flame - Grilled Whopper got hotter than the grill itself, generating overwhelming social & earned media engagement. - Generated more than 40 Million Earned Media impressions worth more than $7.5 Million, with the news spreading to more than 25 countries across 6 continents - The video content got more than 2 million views in just 3 days, with 40% higher engagement as compared to previous Burger King videos - Although we'd partnered with 2 influencers, the content got organically covered by more than 7 prominent Kuwaiti influencers - Burger King's TOM Awareness amongst the target audience went up by a whopping 17%. To put things in perspective, the brand's TOM Awareness had increased by 6% in the past 4 months. The quick boost in TOM resulted in positive impact on brand sales as well.