The Difference Between Brand, Brand Identity, and Branding.

If you took a guess, what brand comes to mind first from the image above? You probably guessed it. Coca Cola. Their brand is one of the largest, most iconic brands in the world and they can be easily recognized from just a simple letter. So let’s talk branding.

Your brand and your visual identity are both critical to your business but they are two different things and both terms have been used loosely in the past years in terms of what they stand for.

These are some of the most common ways project requests that come our way start with:

“We need to redesign our brand”

“We need to update our brand”

“We need to update our brand identity”

Most often, after a brief chat to understand the project at hand, typically they are referring to their logo or website. However, your logo and website is not your brand.‍

Defining “Brand”.

In the simplest form, your brand is the way someone feels about you. A deep down gut feeling. It is the emotional connection your customer has towards you. Every time your customer interacts with your brand, they build up a perception of how they feel and think about you as a business. If you think about your last experience with any brand that was negative, do you trust them as much anymore? Probably not. Over time, your customers will create a set of expectations on how each experience with you should be, and how they feel about you. Those thoughts and memories are what builds long term trust and loyalty. That’s what you want. That’s gold.

The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

Your brand has three primary functions:

1. It Builds Trust

The more trust you build, the more loyal your customers become. You become irreplaceable in their eyes and there is an unbreakable connection between you and your customer. They will choose you over a competitor.

2. It Creates Distinction

You should stand apart from your competition, not blend in. The more distinctive you are from everyone else, the more noticeable you become.

3. It Increases Value

From a service, product, and a business you become more valuable. Additionally ー if your products or services are meant to be luxury, and you do not exude that feeling as a brand people will be hesitant to pay that higher price point. They will not see the value. Take Peloton for example; when they raised their bike prices they actually sold more bikes. Many people believed that because the bike was cheaper that it must not be a quality machine.

Peloton is also a great example of building a valuable brand over time. They empower people to connect, be inspired, and grow stronger together. They are the leader in their segment and while their products are expensive, they have built trust and differentiated themselves from others in a way people believe in and connect with, which has fueled their success. After only launching in 2012 they are now worth 4 billion dollars.‍

Defining “Brand Identity”

Your identity is all of the different touchpoints someone may interact with your business. It is an entire system put together that people can see, touch, hear and feel. This is everything from your logo to emails, customer services, and even the way you speak to people. This is how you influence the perception of your brand. Changing how people think about you, can change their behavior, which will increase your bottom line performance.

Brand Identity Touchpoints

Your logo is only one piece of the puzzle, and while most often it’s the first step when creating your identity, it is not the last. A good logo surrounded by a frustrating website experience, un-unified collateral and marketing is a recipe for failure. Every touchpoint matters.

Your identity has three primary functions:

1. Identify Your Business

The visual look and feel that your company encompasses should separate you from the competition. Over time, your customers can immediately look at something and have a sense of feeling for that brand.

2. Communicate Your Message Clearly

It should communicate to the desired customer you are trying to attract. This is key. Your identity cannot always speak to everyone. Some brands target the average individual looking to stay fit, other brands target suburban moms who want to learn how to cook authentic asian cuisines. By understanding who is your ideal customer profile you can design for them, not for yourself.

3. Create Visual Consistency

Your identity takes separate elements, and makes them whole by staying consistent through design and messaging. Every part of your brand should be consistent. The moment something is different from the rest, you risk mis-communicating to your audience. This breaks trust.

The Branding Process

Branding is the ongoing process of developing, or re-developing your overall strategy and touchpoints within your identity. This could be redeveloping your website, logo, collateral, messaging and your color system. It’s an investment that can help position you for success and growth. There’s several key reasons when the process of branding is necessary.

New Company or Product

• You have started a new business, or have a new product
• You need to raise venture capital, even though you have no customers

Revitalization

• You need a facelift
• Your product or service is great, but you look behind the times
• Your packaging is not distinctive

Consistency

• Everyone creates and does their own marketing
• All of your marketing looks like it comes from different companies and you lack consistency

Reposition

• You are not attracting your desired customers
• You want to appeal to a new customers
• Nobody knows who you are
• You need to communicate more clearly who you are

Name Change

• Your name no longer fits the business you are in
• Your name needs change due to trademark conflicts
• Your name misleads customers‍

You have Merged

• Two companies have merged into one
• You need a new name
• You want to build on the equity of one brand

Starting the Branding Process

The branding process is essential for any business that wishes to differentiate and get ahead of their competition. It’s also a process you shouldn’t rush. While the investment is long term, it can pay off in growth of your business. The overall process consists of four systematic stages that vary from business to business.

Strategy

This gathers all necessary information from research to organized brand strategy workshops.

Design

The development of all visuals and assets

Implementation

The rollout of the new visual identity

Build

Adapt and pivot where necessary and grow your brand over time.

Why Branding is Worth The Investment

In the end, the long term rewards of the branding process building trust, distinction and value pay off big. It creates years of competitiveness for your business. However, in today’s business world everything moves at lightning speed. That makes it easy to get caught into quick fixes such as a fast logo or website redesign on websites such as Fiverr and UpWork which can be risky. The strategy and development process typically takes several weeks to a few months depending on the scale of the project at hand. Rushing this process will not provide the results you are looking for.

                                         ***

Free Branding Workbook

Want to try yourself? We’ve put together a free brand strategy workbook. While it’s not the same as professionally run workshops, it’s a great foundation for you to work from.

Download The Workbook

The Startup

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The first thing you think of when you envision most businesses is their logo and branding. Building the brand is one of the most important parts of building a business of any kind. Whether you want to open a coffee shop or run an influencer account, the way that you brand yourself will play a large role in your success. It is important for showing off who you are to potential customers so that they have a reason to choose you. 

For major companies, branding is known for playing an even more influential role than product identity in a lot of cases. It can also speak to the quality of products or the vibe customers experience. Plain and simple, people love a good brand. Now, let’s discuss how to build one and how to make it successful.

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.

The goal is not to do business with everybody that needs what you have.

The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”

– Simon Sinek

Brand Origin

The most important thing your brand should have is a story of its origin that explains why you exist, what problems and pain points you will address or solve, what makes you different and why should people care about your brand. This will serve as the foundation and undertones throughout all of your branding. Your passion for your company should assist you with the who, what, why, and how to distinguish your company from others.

Branding: How It Looks

A big part of branding that people recognize is the actual appearance of a brand. A good brand has a few core colors, a distinct visual appearance, and a logo. These visual elements like color, typography or font, and images make it easy for you to identify a brand just by looking at it. In the same way that we all recognize the white box from Apple or a red can of Coke, a good brand should have a completely original look.

Branding: Building An Identity

Beyond mere physical elements, a lot of other choices go into making a brand. The two most prominent factors are voice and tone. Your brand voice will be the voice that you use to address your customers. It can be found in the way that you write on your website and the kind of language you use. More often than not, the tone will play an important role in branding because it governs how your voice comes out. Are you being casual? Professional? What does that look like for your company? Nike, for instance, gives an intense, competitive voice in a calm, serious tone. Nike provokes its customer with its strong voice and tone to “Just Do It.” A strong brand always includes a strong voice.

Branding: Know Your Customers

Your customers should always come first, which is why you must keep them in mind with branding. You don’t want to build a brand with no potential customer or without having the market of your potential consumers in mind. Really take a moment and think about the type of customers you want to attract. Find out who your target audience is so that you know how to catch their eye, hold their interest, and address their pain. Narrowing down the pain points of your customers that you will address specifically will help maintain your brand consistency. It will help a lot when it comes to making the most of your brand decisions. Let your audience guide your brand and they will respond in kind.

Building a brand is truly about finding a personality for your company. From typography and colors to the voice and tone, you want all these pieces to mesh together. You may need to explore effective ways to present your ideal business identity. There are so many different ways to go about it, and they often vary by industry. If you are looking for a place to get started, try exploring what other brands in your niche are doing. You will love seeing what other people are doing. This is a great way to learn color schemes and design while also gaining some inspiration!

Increase Your Facebook Ads ROAS With targeting ideas, and secondary metrics

 You can grow your business like crazy if you know how to increase your Return-On-Ad-Spend with Facebook Ads.

Why?

Facebook is the biggest social networking platform in the entire world, with a staggering 2.07 billion users. It also has one of the best advertising platforms in the world that boasts one of the strongest targeting options.

The hardest thing with Facebook Advertising is to keep up with the trend and to know what is working. That’s what we’ll talk about.

My experience

What I learned is that it’s not so much about following what other brands are doing. It’s about understanding your customers and creating advertising that makes them buy. I know this sounds cliché, but everyone hears “videos are the best,” “images are the best,” “it’s all about retargeting,” and, I’m sorry to say, but it’s not about that.

Facebook is a tool, videos and images are tools, and the strength really lies in knowing what makes your customer avatar tick—and want to pull out their credit card. If you haven’t yet figured that out, I recommend doing that first or else Facebook will eat up a lot of your money.

Don’t worry, I’ll help. Here are ten strategies you can use to improve your ROAS with Facebook Ads.

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1) Use Lookalike Audiences Instead of Cold Targeting

This is a big game changer. Once, we worked with a company that was spending $10k per month (we have a case study here) on Facebook Advertising and they hired us to improve their results.

I looked at their ad account and, without even working on their creatives, we took the highest performing ad (which wasn’t profitable) and started testing 150–200 different lookalike audiences. After two weeks, we made their advertising profitable for the first time in six years!

If you don’t know what lookalikes are, they are audiences created by Facebook based on people who took an action on your ad.

The first thing I look at is if our clients are using lookalikes. It has a huge impact on results, more than you could think.

With Facebook ads, you need to focus on two things: your targeting and your creative. Lookalikes solve the problems you might have in targeting the wrong people.

For example, if 1,000 people purchased your product from your Facebook ad, we could group these people into an audience. We could then ask Facebook to find similar people to the people who purchased your product and decide to target them.

Now, on rare occasions where it isn’t the most profitable audience, the rule is ABT: Always Be Testing with Facebook. But 95% of the time it has ended up being more profitable for us.

Try it out.

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2) Target Worldwide

This is huge. I see a lot of people splitting the countries they target, but they have to understand that Facebook ads are about testing, yes, but testing efficiently. On multiple occasions, we end up being surprised to know which countries were the most profitable.

When you find your top-performing countries or even cities, you can create duplicates of your ad to only target those locations. You can trust Facebook to find that for you. It’s way cheaper and most efficient this way (Thank me later).

Now, be careful with South America, Africa, and Asia. They tend to have more fraudulent customers, but they could also be good. From our experience, those countries were never really worth it—but always be testing.

On a side note, it always surprises our clients how much testing we do. Truth is, if you think you are testing enough, you probably aren’t testing enough.

IMPORTANT: if you can’t advertise in other countries because you can only serve those in a certain area, then target the entire area you can cover, no harm done.

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3) Test All Placements

I heard so many people telling me to never target the “right-hand side” or only target the “news feed”. To be honest with you, every type of business and advertising is different. Now, there are some placements that “tend” to be better for certain type of businesses, but if everybody is doing the same thing then you are in a red ocean and you better go in the blue ocean fast.

By testing all placements, you let Facebook optimize for you and you can then see which placements are the most profitable for you to keep spending on. Create duplicates and you’re in business (or maybe you already were?).

Facebook Placements

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4) Test All Ages & Genders

If you want to increase your ROAS, you need to test all ages and genders—except if your advertising is clearly geared towards a certain gender or age group.

For example, if you sell bikinis, your average 35-year-old male will probably not be interested (I learned this the hard way).

I know this is contradicting what the common Facebook advertising blogger says. They all try to make you target something “laser-focused,” like having the smallest audience possible.

Listen, Facebook has a really strong AI and ad placement optimization, and trust me: you can leverage it.

By having small audiences, you drastically reduce the possibilities of testing for Facebook AI and thus don’t leverage it as much.

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5) Start a Conversion and a PPE Ad at the Same Time

Facebook decides to show your ad to more people if people have had a positive experience with it. By running a Pay-Per-Engagement ad alongside your actual conversion ad, you make more people interact with your ad thus increase your positive feedback score, also called relevancy score.

VERY IMPORTANT: you need take your “post ID” and use it to create your PPE advertising so that the likes, comments, and shares will also go into the version of your ad that is currently being used as a conversion ad.

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6) Improve Your “Positive Feedback” Score

Well, I could definitely write an entire article on this topic. Essentially, the better your “positive feedback” score, the more Facebook increases your visibility. This means you’ll pay less to reach more people. It will decrease the cost of your conversions, which will increase your ROAS.

Does that make sense? I made it complicated for no reason. To put it simply: you give more content to Facebook that their users like and they will reward you with more money in your pocket. Isn’t that how business works? Win-win situations.

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7) Only Keep the Profitable Ads

That almost seems too stupid to be said, but it isn’t. When you test, you always have this thing going in your head: when should I turn off this ad? Have I spent enough?

When should you turn off your ad? Well, unless you have $5M to spend per month on Facebook ads (call me if you do), there is no point in spending your money on ten different ads if one is more successful.

The question is: are you satisfied with your ROAS? If yes, then you should scale and focus on what’s working. If you want better results and are ready to take the risk then keep testing.

I’m saying risk because if you test new creatives, you will lose more money at the beginning, but if you do it right, you should find something that gives you cheaper conversions fast enough.

The reality is you could also never find something as profitable as your best converting creative and lose $5,000 in testing. Just be smart, okay? I trust you.

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8) Create Stronger Retargeting

Retargeting is my area of expertise. I love retargeting and you probably know why. It just gives such amazing results. We usually get eight times better results from retargeting than from cold ads. Now, everyone flatters themselves with their eight-fold returns, but what if I told you they were actually missing out on a big opportunity?

You have to see Facebook as a big machine where you spend money to acquire audiences. Most companies don’t make money targeting cold audiences, meaning audiences that haven’t seen them before. They make money by retargeting those who have engaged with their brands.

Now, the cool part with Facebook is you have so many options to create audiences. You can even retarget the people who have visited your website in the past seven days, 7–14 days, 14–28 days, etc. It’s based on time and action taken, which means this article can’t even begin explaining how deep I went into the subject of creating well crafted retargeting campaigns.

One word of advice, if you are getting 8–9x results, you can do better. Never settle! Okay? Never ever ever ever settle for less than what you can accomplish. I’m kidding, you can sometimes, I won’t judge you.

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9) Improve Your Landing Page Design

Again, we’re not going to write another article inside an article (article-ception), but I’ll give you a few pointers as to how you can increase the conversion rate of your landing page.

First thing is to make it beautiful. I know, I know, not the most precise advice, but 99% of websites and landing pages lack design.

My advice: try to have a congruent style that people can follow throughout the website. Second thing: test and track data. Set up Google Analytics and track the changes you made to your website (this is one of my favorite activities—I love knowing what works best).

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10) Understand the ABT of Facebook Ads

Facebook Advertising is essentially just a platform that enables you to test your marketing creatives. As you’ll realize, your ability to create good advertising depends on your ability to know what your audience likes and that, my friend, takes time and discipline.

ABT stands for Always Be Testing because tests give you data and that’s the best way to keep improving what you’ve already found. So the more you spend, the better your advertising will be.

If I had $120,000 to spend on Facebook Ads within a year, I would spend $7,000 a month and test consistently, but I would also wait until I find something that gives me satisfying (profitable) results to spend the rest.

I see a lot of commonalities between Facebook Advertising and the stock market. There are times to buy, times to hold, times to sell out. If your results aren’t too great for two to three months, why not stop and change strategy entirely before getting back into it?

A big game with Facebook is managing your budget, which is a topic for another article. To know when to spend and when to not spend is the ultimate philosophical question of Facebook ads.

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Final Words on Improving Your ROAS

While increasing your ROAS seems like it’s the ultimate goal of using Facebook Advertising, don’t forget to deliver an amazing experience to your customers.

The cost to acquire a customer will always be bigger than keeping a customer. I’ve heard that too many times, but I’ve also made the mistake too many times.

Focusing on acquisition rather than retention is literally like working all day on meeting new people but not taking care of your close friends. If you’re not making new friends, you have none.

It’s us humans, always wanting more, but the biggest businesses spend 95% of their time on their customers and 5% on acquisition. That is definitely saying something.

Hope this helped, and let us know if you know other ways that weren’t mentioned above that could increase our own ROAS in the future.

المستهلك العربي الجديد

المستهلك الجديد. مصطلح لم يتم تداوله بين المسوقين التقليدين في المنطقة العربية لأسباب لا يتسع لذكرها سياق هذا المقال.

و هو خطر يواجه البراندات العربية العريقة و يهدد بفنائها و تدهور مبيعاتها علي المدي المتوسط و الطويل كما انه يهدد الاعمال الصغيرة و الناشئة بتقديمها منتجات و خدمات منفصلة و بعيدة عن اهتمام هذا المستهلك الجديد.

فمن نعم و فضائل وباء الكورونا هو الاسراع في اظهار هذا المستهلك الجديد الذي تأثر بتطور التقنيات و تسارع الاتصالات و تحول العالم الي قرية صغيرة .

فهذا المستهلك الجديد لم يعد ينتمي الي الفصيلة المحافظة و المتمسكة بما هو اصيل و قيم من الاعراف و العادات و اصبح متحررا من الكثير منها و متقبل و متعامل و منتمي لأفكار حديثة و حضارية عالمية. اصبح المستهلك الجديد " مواطن عالمي" الافكار و Liberal Vs. Conservative التأثير علي حساب الوطنيه الضيقة. 

و بفضل سياسات الاقفال و الاغلاق الغبية التي لعبت فيها الحكومات علي شعوب المنطقة لتحقيق اهداف امنية و قومية لجأ هذا المستهلك الجديد الي المنزل و اصبح يتفاعل داخل المنزل بأفكاره التقدمية generation Z مع اخوته و والداه فئات ال millennials و generation X و حتي مع اجداده ال boomers و من نسميهم " جيل الطيبين" . فظهر لدينا فئة/ شريحةيمكن 

وصفها multi- generational households 

اعجبك ام لم يعجبك فالمستهلك الجديد لا يثق و لا يصدق و لا حتي يتابع الاعلام الحكومي او الخاص . فقد تعلم من ازمة الكورونا

 ان يصحو من نومه ليبحث عن المعلومه الحقيقية التي تثير اهتمامه و يمارس دوره في اعادة نشر ما يعتقد انه الحقيقة عبر منصات التواصل المتعدده. و يقف بجانب معلوماته و معتقداته و يدافع عنها بشراسة لأنه لم يعد متلقي موجه بل باحث مؤثر مهما كان حجم عالمه الالكتروني و عدد متابعينه فلذلك فهو انفصل و استقل تماما عن جريدة الدولة او تلفزيونها و اذاعتها. و هذا امر تنبأت به الانظمة منذ سنين وسعت للتواصل و التوجيه عبر هذه المنصات من خلال قنوات رسمية و جيش الكتروني بما اصبح يسمي المطبلين و الذباب الالكتروني و غيرها من مسميات الاستحقار.

المستهلك الجديد يشتري القيمه و ليس الرسالة او الاعلان و يهمه البراندات التي تتواصل معه بشكل سهل و سلس و تحترم تفاعله و رغباته و حتي شكواه. و المستهلك الجديد يحترم البراندات ذات الوجه البشري و التعامل الانساني و المتفهمة و المتعاطفة معه و تتأسس بينهما علاقة مبنيه علي الثقة و الاحترام المتبادل و هنا يمكننا نري الغضب المتصاعد علي براندات الاتصالات بمعظمها و براندات التوصيل و اللوجستيات و توجيه المركبات و وكلاء السيارات و امتصاص براندات قطاع الاغذية و التقنيات لطموح و تطلعات المستهلك الجديد و عقد تحالفات و علاقات انسانية معه.

المستهلك الجديد بل العائلة الجديدة يعتمد اعتماد متصاعد علي تطبيقات الخدمات الآنيةon- demand لتلبية احتياجاته علي حساب التسوق الفعلي كونه ١- مريح ٢- سهل ٣- مناسب و ملائم ٤- غالبا رخيص او ارخص 

المستهلك الجديد نتج عن تزواج عدة اعراق او جنسيات بلا هوية وطنية راسخه ولا مرجعيه دينيه حاكمة ، بل انفتاح و تقبل حتي ما كان يعتبر حرام و غريب و مكروه مثل الملحدين او الشواذ و مناصر لحقوق التعبير و الرأي والمرأة و الطفل و الاقليات علي مستوي العالم وليس بلده فقط. بالنتيجة الثوابت اصبحت من الماضي السحيق و الافكار الجديدة هي المظلة لأي فكر او توجه مجتمعي او سياسي.

و لتلخيص كل ما سبق؛ المستهلك الجديد لديه آمال و تطلعات و تحديات جديدة و يريد ان يساهم بأفكاره و جهده في كل مبادرة تتفق معه فكريا و وجدانيا و تتلخص مطالبه من البراندات في :

 ١- يريد الاحترام الحقيقي لشخصك و وقته و استثماره في الولاء للبراند

 ٢- ان تتولي البراندات قضايا مجتمعيه حقيقية ذات ابعاد و تأثير حقيقي علي مجتمعه و ليس اعمال خيرية و تباهي واستعراض

.٣- ان تتبني البراندات مفاهيم العدالة و المساواة و الانسانية و الحفاظ علي البيئة وتنمية المجتمعات المهمشة و الأقليات الاقل حظا. طبعا مع استمرار المسلمات مثل الجودة والموثوقية و الشفافية.

5 Lessons Burger King Learned by Unleashing the Moldy Whopper

 

Want to future-proof your brand? Be ready to take risks—and take criticism.

A good marketeer needs to be doing two things at the same time. First, you need to drive sales. I doubt any marketeer  will last too long if the brand is tanking in sales. Second, you need to make your brand “future-proof.”

Making the brand “future-proof” requires one to create a vision about how the future will be. If you manage to get to the future first while managing the cost of that journey successfully, chances are you will capture a disproportional amount of market share in the process. Losing that race may end up being costly for your brand. In some cases, being second to something means you end up carrying a lot of cost without getting much credit for it.

I think one doesn’t need to be a marketing visionary to imagine that five to 10 years from now, people will be eating food that doesn’t contain artificial ingredients. In fact, as William Gibson once said, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” So, if you look at the younger generations, you will see that the desire to eat “clean food” is much greater. At the same time, the perception of “fast food” with these same folks is much more negative.

So here is a very clear opportunity to future-proof Burger King. And to do that, we created the Moldy Whopper.

The main objective of Moldy Whopper—created through a collaboration of David Miami, Ingo and Publicis—was to start shifting the perception of Burger King’s food and, with that, increase consideration to visit our restaurants. From experience, every time we hit a home run with one of our ideas, we end up becoming more top-of-mind, which tends to help drive more visits. But that was not the main objective here, just a side effect of the scale of talkability we receive from ideas like Moldy Whopper.

Moldy Whopper surpassed all of our expectations when it comes to earned media impressions. So far, we earned around 8.4 billion organic media impressions (Sources: Verizon Media and Boxnet).

The quality of the impressions was also very strong. Key media vehicles from all around the globe covered the campaign. And despite the fact that some headlines had a sensationalist tone (classic clickbait strategy), the vast majority of the articles were very positive and clearly landed the main objective of the campaign: no artificial preservatives.

Contrary to what some articles/analyses reported, sentiment was primarily positive-neutral because of the significant volume news and editorial posts had on sites and Twitter.

We believe there is a clear reason why some articles or analyses reported a sentiment which skewed more negative than the one we are showing here. Many times, the automatic analysis created by tools commonly used to monitor sentiment have limitations with keywords which are negative in theory. We faced this issue in many of our campaigns before. For instance, when we did Bullying Jr. or Whopper Neutrality, key words like “bullying” and “repeal” were interpreted by the algorithm as negatives even when the headlines and conversations were positive.

The same happened with Moldy Whopper. That’s why our team manually categorize the most popular posts—such as highly retweeted or shared articles and posts—that would typically be categorized as negative because they include words like “moldy” or “disgusting.” By manually categorizing them, we can ensure that posts that say things like “ugly but beautiful” or “disgustingly brilliant” are categorized as positive or neutral based on the full context of the post.

The majority (74%) of total conversation occurred on Twitter followed by news channels with 13% of total conversation. The campaign garnered around 600 million potential Twitter impressions. 41% of the conversation was in the form of retweets as users shared posts either from news accounts or other Twitter users. Mentions peaked at noon on the 19th (our press embargo broke early morning that day).

It is also important to highlight that in this campaign, owned content proved to be incredibly engaging to the BK audience, exceeding all KPI benchmarks on all owned platforms. Burger King’s owned tweet was one of the major conversation drivers with about 1,600 retweets.

On Facebook, there were almost 1.4 million total minutes viewed on the Moldy Whopper video, and 39% of total viewers watched all 45 seconds of the video. We typically see users start to drop off at around 4 seconds into a video.

On Twitter, campaign tweet exceeded the organic benchmark engagement rate by 159% and the organic benchmark video view count by 187%. Paid promotion helped to boost reach, but we saw much stronger engagement through our owned audience, which is to be expected.

Instagram content saw strong performance as well, with the in-feed photo exceeding the engagement rate benchmark by 27% and the IG story exceeding benchmark by 59%.

The fact that the creative was varied across platforms also likely led to successful metrics as it helped avoid audience fatigue, which has been a factor in previous campaign performance.

Usually when we do a campaign of this magnitude, we run a quantitative analysis with a robust sample size in the key market driving the campaign (in this case, the United States). So, we leveraged YouGov to run a 2,000-plus sample size research to evaluate, among other things, level of awareness, key brand attributes, and consideration to visitation. We measure all that, comparing people who saw the campaign versus people who did not see the campaign.

The main objective of the campaign was “to start changing the perception of Burger King’s food and, with that, increase consideration to visit our restaurants.”

The level of awareness we reached with this campaign was very high. In other words, this material truly stood out and was seen by a lot of people. Just to illustrate how big Moldy Whopper was, we reached a level of awareness 50% higher than our 2019 Super Bowl campaign (“Eat Like Andy”). And our 2019 Super Bowl campaign was the most talked about, searched, and discussed campaign of the Super Bowl last year. Moldy Whopper generated a significantly larger impact than that on a fraction of the budget.

But did people get it?

The short answer is: Yep, most people did.

And that’s not surprising. Just looking at the word cloud from social media, one can clearly see words like burger, whopper, preservatives, artificial – all of which directly correlate to the message we wanted to land. The word cloud is automatically generated by Crimson Hexagon based on the opinion monitor.

It’s no wonder the awareness around Burger King having no artificial ingredients is 5x higher among people who saw Moldy Whopper than among those who didn’t see Moldy Whopper.

The combination of the level of awareness (cut-through), the clarity of the message (no artificial preservatives) and sentiment (positive-neutral) resulted in a strong impact to all brand attributes we measured.

An important, and surprising, stat: 22.8%

The main objective of the Moldy Whopper campaign was not to drive short-term sales. From my personal experience, the best way to drive short-term sales in our product category is to do a promotion (and the fast food category is filled with them) and/or to launch a new product.

On top of that (and again from personal experience), consumers tend to buy benefits/taste and not the absence of something. When I worked in fast moving consumer goods, I saw lots of product launches fail in sales because the main point communicated was the absence of something instead of the benefit offered by the product. That happened with some Knorr products (cooking aids) which removed artificial ingredients. That happened with some Dove products (body wash) which removed sulfates (harsher surfactants/ soap). Those messages helped elevate the brands, but they didn’t drive short-term sales.

No one in our office was expecting consumers to jump in the car and drive desperately to Burger King to buy a Whopper just because we removed artificial preservatives. We are doing this because it’s the right thing to do and we don’t see a future where fast food brands will have artificial preservatives. So by getting there first, we are making our brand future-proof. And, hopefully, in the long run, this will not only help with sales but mostly avoid the brand becoming irrelevant (and thus lose sales).

With that said, as part of our YouGov research we do measure “consideration to visitation”. This measure basically indicates whether people feel more inclined to visit Burger King if they saw the campaign or not. It’s usually very difficult to see a shift in campaigns which are not price pointed (promotions) or that are not offering a new product.

Moldy Whopper grew consideration to visitation by 22.8%. And that’s truly remarkable.

Sometimes, BK ideas get so much traction that, even when their main objective was not to drive short term sales, we end up seeing an increase in visitation. In a category which is so promotionally driven, raising “top of mind” a little bit can have a positive impact on visitation and thus sales. It happened in the past with campaigns like Eat Like Andy, Google Home of the Whopper, McWhopper, among others. It is still early days to report that, but it’s likely that this one has the potential to accomplish that too.

Why you need the campfire and the fireworks

One common question with Moldy Whopper is: Do you really need to go that far?

Yes.

Yes, we do.

As Bill Bernbach once said, “If no one notices your advertising, everything else is academic”

And it’s not like people are craving to learn that the Burger King brand has removed artificial preservatives from its food. People have other things to do with their lives than focus on the “great things Burger King is doing.” So yes, one needs to push hard for the message to be noticed and become relevant.

Let me use an example to illustrate the point a bit better. By the end of last year, we launched a campaign called “Whopper Prank”. It was a film showing a focus group where we surprised people by serving them a Whopper while pretending it was a burger from a fancy burger place.

This is a pretty decent spot. It tested really well on Link test (short term sales likelihood above 80%). It checked all the boxes. It landed that we are removing artificial ingredients from our food. We aired this spot on TV. We aired a 30 second version of this spot on the pre-Super Bowl slot (which is expensive). We also aired the same version on the post-Super Bowl spot. Results were good. It helped sales. It helped build some of our attributes.

Have you ever seen this spot?

I doubt it.

And the media plan was decent.

Was it a failure? No. It helped the brand. But the impact of a campaign like this is relatively small. We have to do it. We will have more of that. But we need to go above and beyond. If you want to create brand reappraisal, you need the perfect storm. You need the campfire (comfortable, keeps you warm) and the fireworks (explosions). That’s an analogy I am stealing from a chat I had with Brian Collins last week. Whopper Prank is campfire. Moldy Whopper is fireworks. They work in different ways. And they are both needed.

By the way, the sentiment on the safe Whopper Prank on YouTube is 77% positive and 23% negative, which is worse than Moldy Whopper. So, what is really “safe”? Something to think about.

What we learned

To wrap this one up, I would like to reflect on what I believe to be the key things we learned that will help marketers deploy bold ideas like this one.

1. Align on the strategic objectives

I know this may sound obvious, but reality is that many organizations fail to check this box. It is critical that you define with your CEO (or boss) and the top levels of your organization (COO, CFO, Regional Presidents, etc) the key strategic objectives for your brand or company. In our case here, improving the quality of the food we serve by cleaning up the product portfolio from ingredients of artificial sources is a strategic priority. We believe real food tastes better. And if we want to continue to be successful 10 years from now, it’s imperative that we do this work and get credit for it by communicating it.

2. Clearly define what success looks like

After you align on the strategic objective, make sure you define the metrics that will be used to evaluate success of the activity. In the case of Moldy Whopper, the main objective of the campaign was to land the claim of “no artificial preservatives” in order to start shifting people’s perceptions around BK’s food quality. With that in mind, we managed to put the proper KPIs in place to evaluate results. By leveraging this method again and again, one is able to build credibility around the link between the creative approach and the results.

3. Build your credibility

Over time, our organization has become more and more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Pushing creative boundaries has become part of our DNA and when people started to realize that, and when done right, the approach works in a powerful way. Defining the strategic objectives and measurements will help you make the discussion less subjective. And if you manage to do it multiple times, it will become easier and easier. I mean, it will become less and less difficult (it’s never easy). One of the biggest compliments I have ever received in my career was when one of our leadership team members came to me as said, “this is a crazy idea, but I feel good about doing it because you believe in it so much”. That’s a good place to be as a marketer.

4. Dare to do something different

I can think of 1,000 reasons (or more) to argue why we shouldn’t do Moldy Whopper. We are all really smart. We can build arguments for and against anything. Who doesn’t have someone in their team who always says, “To play devil’s advocate, what if…”?

We are good at brainstorming about potential problems. So why not use a different approach?

Focus on developing your criteria. Focus on building really strong partnerships with your creative teams. And then go for it because of just one reason. And the reason is: “It’s a mind-blowing idea which perfectly fits our strategic objectives, and I can only think of one brand that can pull it off. And that brand is ours.” This should be enough of a reason to make Moldy Whopper happen.

Organizations are filled with people who can say “no” to things and lack people with conviction to pick fights to say “yes” to bold ideas. Be that “yes” person. It will be good for your brand, good for your company and good for your career. We need more “yes marketers.”

5. Grow a thick skin

This is a really important point. When you do something bold, something that stands out, people will criticize it. This will happen. It always happens—no matter how purposeful, noble or great it is.

And the criticism will show up on your boss’ newsfeed (or inbox). And maybe your boss will come and talk to you. All of that is a side effect of doing something great.

You should surely always interrogate the results, but don’t spend too much time second guessing everything (and yourself). Facing criticism is part of doing something great, something different. If everyone agreed that Moldy Whopper was good, then it was probably not that good to start with. Unfortunately, throughout my entire career, I only saw convergence of opinions with things that were flat, common, and cliché.

So if you want to aim high, get ready for criticism. It’s part of the package.