Burger King: Whopper Gate [image]

Credits & Description:

Client: Burger King Belgium
Product (Service): Burger King Belgium
Agency: Buzzman Paris, France
Entrant: Buzzman Paris, France
Idea Creation: Buzzman Paris, France
Production: Buzzman Paris, France
Production 2: Neuvième Page Paris, France
CEO: Kevin Derycke (Burger King® Belgium)
Marketing Director: Dirk Lammens (Burger King® Belgium)
Business Development: Raphaël Duvivier (Burger King® Belgium)
Brand Director: Vic Dresen (Burger King® Belgium)
President and Executive Creative Director: Georges Mohammed- Chérif (Buzzman)
Vice-President: Thomas Granger (Buzzman)
Managing Director: Julien Levilain (Buzzman)
Creative Director: Louis Audard (Buzzman)
Creative Director: Tristan Daltroff (Buzzman)
Artistic Director: Louis Audard (Buzzman)
Copywriter: Tristan Daltroff (Buzzman)
Account Director: Xavier Devaux Landragin (Buzzman)
Account Executive Assistant: Valentin Allard (Buzzman)
Head of Digital & Innovation: François Phan (Buzzman)
Digital Production: Christelle Pereira (Buzzman)
Digital Artistic Director & Ilustrator: Tony Tran (Buzzman)
Motion Designer: Théo Berdrin (Buzzman)
Digital Studio: Neuvième Page (Neuvième Page)
Head of TV Production: Vanessa Barbel (Buzzman)
TV & Print Production: Benoît Crouet (Buzzman)
Head of Social Media: Julien Scaglione (Buzzman)
Social Media Manager: Alexandre Ponte (Buzzman)
Head of PR & Communication: AMELIE JUILLET (Buzzman)
PR & Communication Assistant: Victoria Morin (Buzzman)
PR & Communication Assistant: Kenza Bennani (Buzzman)
Synopsys:
The Campaign
We created a simple voting website.
When people arrived on the site, it urged them to elect the true King of the land.
They had to choose between King Philippe and Burger King.
If people tried to vote for Philippe, there were a few jokes to try to dissuade them.
The site is visible here : http://whostheking.neuviemepag...
And when the Palace reacted (what we actually had dreamed of), we had to be quick. We were hoping they would react, but we didn't think they'd be that mad. So we had to make things right, and we decided to abdicate by removing the "KING" in our logo.
Execution
As Burger King is a major player on Social Media, we used this to promote the website.
We decided to launch it a month before the first opening.
The link was posted on their Facebook page and their Twitter account, along with a press release.
We also used wild postering to promote the campaign with funny words and a link to the website.
Then, when the Palace reacted, we had to act fast. And two days later, we issued another press release and posted the "new logo" on our Facebook & Twitter.
But we knew this wasn't sufficient, so we put the new logo everywhere we could, including a few local ads and the construction panels on the coming restaurants.
More than 1 billion impressions (we lost count of the PR releases, there were articles in major newspapers all across Europe, the USA, in India, in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Japan...) One of the most successful openings in Europe, as the kitchen was out of food by 8pm.
The Situation
This operation was set up for Burger King's arrival in Belgium.
We decided to poke fun at the King of the Belgians by making an big action, that will be covered by the media and on the web.
The Strategy
We had one goal, and one goal only : go viral.
We knew this would have to be a PR coup, we didn't have any budget to launch a huge campaign.
The operation was for everyone, every Belgian, as we just wanted to pass the message : Burger King is coming.
The message was willingly broad, no specifics needed.
Every canal was relevant.