Burger King sales were declining fast. And while regular promotion and discounts were reversing some of the decline, this wasn’t a sustainable solution due to 3 main concerns:
Continuous promotions would affect the brand image and might create perceptions of being a “discount & cheap” brand
Discounting premium or core items might erode future revenues as some might get used to the habit of ordering such items only when discounted.
Some of our price sensitive audience only consider Burger King during promotions as the brand lacked a truly differentiated value menu that is affordable throughout the year, with or without a promotion.
Accordingly, our challenge was to convince our audience that we are real about providing excellent value meals without affecting the brand image or give an impression of being a discounted brand.
The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)
Burger King sales were declining fast. And while regular promotion and discounts were reversing some of the decline, this wasn’t a sustainable solution due to 3 main concerns:
1- Continuous promotions would affect the brand image and might create perceptions of being a “discount & cheap” brand
2- Discounting premium or core items might erode future revenues as some might get used to the habit of ordering such items only when discounted.
3- Some of our price sensitive audience only consider Burger King during promotions as the brand lacked a truly differentiated value menu that is affordable throughout the year, with or without a promotion.
Accordingly, our challenge was to convince our audience that we are real about providing excellent value meals without affecting the brand image or give an impression of being a discounted brand.
The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)
As more brands moved towards value and tight budgets became the buzzword, the meaning of value started to reflect low quality, tasteless products, fake items, copy-cats, among other negative connotations.
Our strategy was to play on the idea of fakeness/low quality copycats and flipping it into successful messages that would engage with our audience just like any other high-budget high quality, celebrity-promoted campaign, all while doing so on a stripped budget.
The idea was right in front of us: shoot like a normal campaign but rely on cheaper components like props, set and even the cast. The “not so famous celebrity” cast. And then brag about it to and show that we did it on cheaper budget to so that we don’t compromise on the quality of our food. It was cheap adds for better foods.
The Creative Idea (20% of vote)
First, we gave a name to our affordable, tasty, yet not so popular underdog items. A name that would make them more popular, a name that would truly stand out in Arabic. “Al Zanga” menu, or the Tough time meals.
Then we hired a doppelganger that looks almost identical to a famous, yet expensive celebrity called “Abou Hamdan”. A celebrity that we previously hired. And we called this guy: “Akho Hamdan”. While he was identical to the original, he had Bad acting skills and couldn’t even keep up a line. To dramatize the story, we removed cameras, sacrificed lighting and barely relied on props.
The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)
Not only our idea was relatable to the message, but our audience raved about it. Even the real “Abou Hamdan” engaged with us and jokingly offered a discount for the real deal, which helped in boosting our campaign’s performance even further, leading to 35.6 million impressions and 6.8 million video views.
This online success was crowned by an increase in sales of the Zanga menu by a whopping 199 items daily, on average in September 2020, which is a 1547% increase over the same period of last year! Yup 1547%.
In summary, al Zanga items went from the shadows and right into the spotlight, becoming Burger King’ hero selling items with almost ONE QUARTER of all brand sales coming from Al Zanga menu.
Not bad for a value meal!!