“If Burger King doesn’t have the Whopper, they might as well be called Burger Queen.” That was one customer’s response when he found out that Burger King had stopped selling the Whopper. Of course, the fast food giant didn’t actually take the Whopper off the menu. It was part of an advertising campaign that includes TV spots and a long-form video created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky to celebrate the Whopper’s 50th anniversary.
The spots, which debuted on YouTube and TV simultaneously, show real customers’ reactions when they are told the Whopper is no longer available. All spots tie back to the new site whopperfreakout.com–which features the long form video that documents the story with reactions and behind-the-scenes footage. The video also captures customers’ reactions to another scenario–ordering a Whopper and receiving something else like burgers from Wendy’s and McDonald’s.
“We wanted to use the Whopper’s 50th anniversary as a chance to claim a little bit of Whopper superiority over other burgers. It’s always a tricky thing going in chest pounding ‘we’re better’ even though we believe it,” explained Rob Reilly, VP/creative director, CP + B. “So we asked ourselves, ‘Is there a way we can do it that felt real?'”
The CP + B team presented the idea of telling customers BK was no longer selling the Whopper while hidden cameras caught their reactions and he said that Burger King bought it just on an idea board. “That was pretty neat,” Reilly said.
“Burger King has proven they are one of the most innovative clients. They push the boundary every single time. They never waivered this time. They get my vote for client of the year. They trusted us and they helped guide us.”
He pointed out the most rewarding thing about working on this campaign is the trust that BK put in them to do a seven-and-a-half minute documentary versus something ‘stickier’ on the website. “It wasn’t a struggle to get the client to run this as is. They recognized the idea was big enough just to let it be seen,” Reilly said.
Executing the idea properly involved a lot of preparation. For instance, it took a while to find a director who was interested in this type of project, which is full of unknown variables. The team landed Henry Alex Rubin of Smuggler.
They also had to find a state where they allowed the use of hidden cameras and that had a good cross-section of people. They decided to shoot at a Burger King in Las Vegas. They spent a lot of time getting camera moves right. “We knew if we had them in the right place, we wouldn’t miss anything. You never know where the comedy is going to come from so you have to cover all your bases so as not to miss anything,” said Reilly.
They used 11 cameras including three Sony BRC 300 Robotic cameras in the Burger King, one Panasonic Robocam in the drive thru, one Elmo Lipstick in the drive-thru booth on talent and four Elmo lipstick cameras in the restaurant.
An actor also posed as a reporter outside the restaurant interviewing people about how they felt about the Whopper being taken off the menu. The team also decided to have some actors playing employees to keep the flow going, but all of the customers were real people.
“We held tight to the notion that any fake customers would have ruined it,” Reilly said. “We wanted reactions that were 100 percent real. People are into that these days.”
The numbers show that audiences are into this campaign. Whopperfreakout.com has almost 250,000 unique visits since it launched this month, with each visitor spending about nine minutes at the site. And YouTube shows the longform video having almost 90,000 views.
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