CASE STUDY Burger King / This article appeared in Contagous issue Eighteen. Contagous is an intelligence resource for the global marketing communiy focusing on non-tradiional media and emergng technologes www.contagiousmagazine.com For more information please contac Harry Gayner on +44 (0) 20 7575 1822 or [email protected] 1st Page Case Study.indd 1 5/3/09 14:56:57 case study / burger king / RENAISSANCE MAN BK.indd 2 8/3/09 15:45:39 contagious 70 / 71 CASE STUDY / BURGER KING / RENAISSANCE MAN / YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A BABY BOOMER TO REMEMBER A TIME WHEN MCDONALD’S NOT ONLY DOMINATED THE FAST FOOD MARKET IN REVENUE, BUT ALSO IN MARKETING. RARE FOR A CHALLENGER BRAND, BURGER KING STRUGGLED WITH THE BURDEN OF BEING MORE KNOWN THAN LOVED. FAST FORWARD TO THE PRESENT, AND THE LANDSCAPE IS VERY DIFFERENT INDEED. THROUGH A CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH AGENCIES INCLUDING CRISPIN PORTER + BOGUSKY, THE PERENNIAL SECOND PLACE FINISHER IS FINALLY HAVING THINGS ITS OWN WAY / BY JESS GREENWOOD / BK.indd 3 8/3/09 15:45:41 case study / burger king / ‘We bore all the hallmark signs of a troubled company,’ reflects Burger King’s chief marketing officer Russ Klein as he reluctantly recalls 2003. Back then, the Burger King Corporation was struggling following seven straight years of sales decline, having been sold anthropological research. ‘The science of how we got off by parent company Diageo the previous year to a there is sound,’ says Klein. ‘There’s a more potent set triumvirate of private equity firms. Footfall had dropped of imagery around our brand identity than other names by 22%, yet the fast food industry as a whole was in our space. Our name is powerful. We cook over fire. enjoying healthy growth. ‘The Burger King brand which, There’s a certain masculinity, an adolescence to our in the 1970s had stood for choice, personalisation and brand and our product.’ individual preference, had been utterly devalued. ‘We It takes a brave brand to admit its affinity with worked with our agencies to find out how we were adolescent masculinity. ‘The Superfan can be a bit of perceived, and concluded that we were a brand that a misnomer even for people inside our own group of people knew rather than loved,’ Klein continues. ‘That stakeholders,’ clarifies Klein. ‘But the Superfan is by far was a sticky set of words for us.’ the most important source of business for us, and we By the end of 2008, Burger King posted record can’t afford to be complacent. Our guy visits Burger worldwide revenues of $2.46 billion – a rise of 10% from King five times a month, but eats out 43 times a month. the previous year, and its 18th consecutive quarter of They’ll go to another fast food restaurant 11 times a positive sales growth. In-store traffic was at its best for month. We’re well aware that the Burger King brand is a decade. Earnings per share stood at $1.38, up 24% not the only restaurant this person chooses to visit. Think from 2007 – another record year for the company. At a about the Pepsi generation. The premise was that if you time when many global companies are shrinking, Burger were a Pepsi person, you’d never drink anything else. King is promising up to 400 new restaurants in 2009, In reality that was never true. As a challenger, we can especially in growth markets like China and Brazil. afford to take occasional swipes at competitors – but And Burger King’s brand value is soaring. Having we’re always careful not to go to an inappropriate place successfully experimented with gaming, user-generated as we recognise that our customer finds something of content and social networking, Burger King is now value in those brands.’ feted as a poster child for successful new marketing He continues: ‘What we’re really working with and techniques. AdWeek crowned Burger King its 2008 against is need states. What are you in the mood for advertiser of the year, while AdAge gave its agency of today? If it’s fast food, why not Burger King? That’s the year award to Crispin Porter + Bogusky, highlighting where our growth comes from. If we can go to the same the agency’s work for Burger King in securing the prolific eater-out and wring out an extra visit a month, it accolade. may sound small, but the math around that is gigantic.’ So what brought about this epic change? New menu? Having established this ideological connection with Revised retail strategy? Clever marketing? All of these its key customer, Burger King set about establishing an things have featured in BK’s renaissance, but Brian outward-facing brand proposition characterised by the Gies, Burger King’s VP, Marketing Impact thinks it began words ‘provocative, not pleasant’. Almost all marketing further back than that. ‘It stemmed from finding our brand is devised with this strategy in mind. Small wonder, proposition, and that coherent voice,’ he explains. ‘We perhaps, that BK has found such a comfortable creative spent years trying to be all things to all people. But for match in Crispin Porter + Bogusky, whose principal and the past half a decade we’ve focused on the Superfan.’ executive creative director Alex Bogusky is renowned for telling his creatives, ‘Don’t write me a campaign. Write The Superfan Club me a press release’. Burger King’s Superfan is probably an 18-35 year old Rob Reilly is co-executive creative director at CP+B, male who’s addicted to the net and loves his games and has acted as creative lead on the Burger King console. He loves irreverent humour and doesn’t account since 2003. ‘Six years ago we introduced our take himself too seriously. He’s open to new forms of brand voice identifying Burger King as the cool uncle promotion, and prefers his marketing risqué, but honest. – the guy who tells you how it really is. The filter by He enjoys being challenged, and doesn’t wish to be which we judge ideas is the question: “would the cool spoon-fed. Oh, and he also likes big, indulgent burgers. uncle say that?”’ When Crispin initially began working Burger King finally located its Superfan following some with Burger King, things were different. ‘Nobody loved BK.indd 4 8/3/09 15:45:43 contagious 72 / 73 SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN / WHOPPERETTES / BROOKE BURKE / PAPARAZZI SHOTS / ANGRY WHOPPER / CAVALCADE OF CARTOON COMEDY / SETH MACFARLANE / BK.indd 5 8/3/09 15:45:48 case study / burger king / the brand, so we had no idea what would stick,’ Reilly recalls. Crispin’s response was to experiment by coming up with three completely different campaigns, all designed to resurrect the company’s ‘Have It Your Way’ positioning, established in the seventies as a response to McDonald’s perceived rigidity. ‘Have It Your Way’ is anchored in empowerment,’ comments Gies. ‘It means quality, authenticity, variety, choice and control.’ The first three campaigns were the by now infamous Subservient Chicken, in which a man in a chicken costume responded to instructions given by web users by Have It Your Way technology’, underpinning BK’s who wanted to ‘have it their way’; a TV campaign aping commitment to giving consumers what they want, when the awkward dynamics of hit British docu-spoof The they want it. Office; and ‘Wake up with the King’, in which a BK icon of old was reborn, turning up in unusual situations More recently, Burger King paired with the creator of bearing breakfast. ‘Within the cool uncle voice, we the hit animation series Family Guy Seth MacFarlane tried to introduce things hoping one of them would hit,’ for his ‘Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy’, a series of continues Reilly. ‘All of them hit.’ short films showcased exclusively on Google’s content platform. Burger King worked with MacFarlane to create Since then, this scattershot approach to Burger King’s the ads. The King opens each film by bursting through the advertising has proven to be a strength rather than a scenery and running towards the camera. Burger King weakness, with TV campaigns sitting comfortably relinquished its sponsorship of the initiative after the first alongside new media initiatives, a perfect balance of ‘series’, remaining tight-lipped as to why, although Brian mass communication and niche exercises in brand Gies says: ‘We were excited to be the first to partner loyalism. ‘Superfans are always expecting stuff that’s with Seth on the launch, and work together to create new, strange and provocative,’ explains Reilly. ‘Burger original Burger King content exclusively for the digital King is a brand that is expected to just go for it every arena.’ time. And yes, we do question whether each idea is something that the press would write about. It’s a useful However, Burger King doesn’t always need to piggy strategy that helps us stay focused on our audience.’ back existing properties; it’s more than proved it can go it alone. Christmas campaigns for its flagship Whopper prove its skill in this area. 2005’s effort was the epic Surfing the Zeitgeist Whopperettes campaign fronted by model/actress Whilst McDonald’s must maintain a delicate balance, Brooke Burke, culminating in an elaborate Super Bowl catering to picky mothers, petulant teenagers and spot which hammered home the ways in which you could ADD tots, Burger King’s strict focus on the Superfan, make the Whopper your own. In a nod to an obsession with alongside its challenger brand status, enables campaigns celebrity culture, Crispin seeded paparazzi style photos to joyfully ride the zeitgeist to new media adulation and showing Burke caught in flagrante with The King, now global column inches.