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.
The main objective of Moldy Whopper—created througha 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 towhat 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.
However, creating actionable online content without using the right tools can be quite challenging.
The good news is: I’ve compiled a list of content-creation tools you can use to pump out quality content faster. And the best part is you don’t have to pay a penny to use any of these tools.
SEO content leverages traffic from a search engine. This is why it performs better than content that’s not optimized.
According to Internet Live Stats, Google alone receives 80,056 search queries in a second. If your SEO is an afterthought to you, you’re missing out on a lot of organic traffic.
The following programs will give you an insight into how to optimize your content on Google and other search engines:
Ubersuggest is a multifunctional SEO tool owned by Neil Patel. The tool allows you to identify fresh and variable keyword opportunities in your industry.
Ubersuggest will give you an insight into a keyword’s average monthly searches and how difficult or otherwise it is to rank for it.
Also, you can use Ubersuggest to spy on your competitors and find out their top-performing content. You can use this as a framework to create content that’ll outperform your competitors.
AnswerThePublic lets you peep into your reader’s mind.
Actually, the tool gives you insight into the exact types of questions your audience searches for on the internet. You can use this information to create content that provides in-depth answers to questions that are bogging their mind.
Next on the list is Google Search Console. With Google Search Console, you can track your website performance on Google result pages.
Also, the tool helps you detect common SEO errors on your website without consulting an SEO expert. Fixing these errors will most likely improve your website’s ranking on search-engine result pages.
Google Alerts is a web-monitoring tool that lets you monitor important internet discussions in your industry in real time. This tool will alert you via email or RSS whenever the topics you’re tracking pop up on the web.
Google Alerts gives you a lot of flexibility — meaning, you’re in total control of how often you want to receive notifications. It can be monthly, weekly, daily, or promptly.
It’s ideal for monitoring high-interest topics in your industry that you can leverage.
Content-Writing Tools
Text is the basic form of any digital content. Infographics, webinars, and presentations were all in the form of text before they were transitioned to their final forms.
Although there are tons of content-writing tools out there, here are some major ones you should consider:
Evernote is ideal for capturing content ideas. You can use it to take notes; create outlines; and save pictures, web clippings, or any other resources you need to create a piece of content.
You can also use it to create long-form content like articles or blog posts.
Evernote will give you 60MB cloud-storage space for free every month. Also, free usage is limited to two devices. Meaning, you can only access the notes in your cloud-storage on two devices.
To enjoy more flexibility, you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.
Grammarly is a writing assistant that helps you see grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors in your writings. Not only that, it suggests suitable replacements for the errors detected.
Grammarly can be used to edit blog posts, web copy, newsletter, video scripts, webinars, etc.
Hemingway Editor is yet another writing assistant. While Grammarly checks for spelling and grammatical errors, Hemingway Editor aims at making your content clearer and more readable for your audience.
Hemmingway Editor will point out your excess usage of adverbs and passive voice. Also, it’ll suggest you substitute long words with short and punchy ones.
In general, the tool will help you prune your content — making it very easy for readers to understand.
CoSchedule’s headline analyzer examines the structure, grammar, and readability of your headlines.
It will rate your headline 1-100 based on its word combinations, length, and how engaging it is.
Also, you can use the CoSchedule headline analyzer to test out different headlines to determine the one that’s the most compelling.
Graphic-Design Tools
According to Twitter, tweets with images, on average, get a 35% increase in retweets. Therefore, adding stunning visuals to your content is one sure way to pique your reader’s interest and keep them engaged.
Here are some of the tools you can use to whip up stunning visuals, even if you’re not a graphic-design guru:
Canva is a freemium graphic-design program that allows you to create crisp and stunning images for your online content. It has tons of ready-made templates you can customize to create personalized graphic designs. Not only that, it has a drag-and-drop editor that simplifies graphic designing even for a total newbie.
Canva’s ideal for creating compelling visuals for your blog posts, ebooks, and social-media posts.
Fotor has a simple user interface that lets you edit pictures like a Photoshop expert — even if you’re a total novice. You can add frames, filters, and effects to enhance the quality of your pictures.
You can also use the tool to design stunning visuals to jazz up your blog posts and social-media posts.
Stencil has tons of preinstalled templates, font styles, and a library of over 2 million stock photos you can use to design beautiful visuals within minutes.
You can knock off your first ten visual designs for free. However, you’ll need to opt for a paid subscription to create more designs. Or you can wait for a month when you’ll get another ten free design slots.
Animation-Creation Tools
Animations help you convey your message in a fun and engaging way.
Biteable has a library of over 85,000 short clips coupled with tons of ready-made templates. It also has a simple user interface that lets you knock off engaging animated videos at a snap.
Biteable lets you create your first five videos for free.
Boomerang is ideal for making short and funny videos.
You can create as many short videos as possible with the tool without paying a penny. However, to use Boomerang, you’ll need to have an account on Instagram.
Boomerang only works on mobile phones and tablets.
Powtoon is a cloud animation maker with tons of preinstalled templates. With the tool, you can knock off short, simple, and engaging videos in no time. You can also add background, text, characters, and so on to your video to make it unique.
You’ll be given 100MB of free cloud-storage space to store your animated videos. However, you’ll need to opt for a paid plan if you’ve exhausted your free storage space.
Moovly has a large library of images, short scenes, libraries, and templates you can use to create engaging animated explainer videos within minutes.
It also has a drag-and-drop user interface that allows you to create engaging videos with limited skill and budget.
Moovly’s free trial comes with a lot of limitations. Your maximum video length cannot exceed three minutes, and you can’t remove Moovly’s watermark on your videos unless you’re on a premium plan.
Video-Creation Tools
Video is one of the most engaging forms of online content. According to Comscore, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product after watching a video.
Although, there are a lot of video-creation tools out there, here are some of the best ones you can consider:
iMovie is a free video-editing software exclusively for Mac and iOS users. This tool allows you to bundle different short clips together to make a longer video.
Not only that, but you can add soundtracks, text, and filters to your video to give it a more personalized feel. Also, iMovie allows you to render finished video projects in different formats and screen sizes.
Unlike iMovie, WeVideo supports different platforms like Mac, Windows, mobile, and the web.
The tool is ideal for both professionals and amateurs. This implies you can whip out professional-looking videos in no time irrespective of your skill set.
Magisto is equipped with emotion-detecting technology. This technology uses artificial intelligence to automatically capture the emotional state you want to present in your video.
This implies you can create emotionally driven videos without doing any heavy editing. Instead, Magisto will add scenes, soundtracks, and effects that reflect the emotion you want to capture automatically.
Magisto is ideal for anyone who wants to create engaging videos but lacks the editing skill required to achieve this manually.
Wave.video is an online video maker you can use to create powerful and engaging videos for your audience.
It has an ample library of over 300 million short clips, pictures, and soundtracks. It also has a user-friendly editor that allows you to customize your videos with ease. You can add your own text, colors, and filters to make your videos unique.
Also, Wave.video lets you optimize your video aspect ratio to fit any social-media platform’s dimensions.
Infographic-Creation Tools
Infographics are concise. They get straight to the point. This is why most people love them compared to long-form content like videos or blog posts.
Infogram is a data-visualization tool that lets you create well-detailed infographics for your audience. It has over 500 maps, 35 charts, and over 20 ready-made templates.
Also, Infogram has a simple user interface and a drag-and-drop editor that makes designing infographics very easy.
Venngage is packed with different features that let you create persuasive and eye-catching infographics.
You can choose any Venngage preinstalled template and add your own charts, icons, and colors. When you’re done designing, hit the download button. Voila! You’ve created an infographic.
Visme has thousands of templates, content blocks, and color schemes you can use to whip up a custom infographic in no time. Not only that, it has a huge library of images, icons, and charts.
You can use Visme to create both static and animated infographics.
Make a Meme lets you create funny and interesting memes without paying a dime. Also, you can use it to share the memes you’ve created with other meme creators on the platform.
Kapwing is yet another tool you can use to create unique and engaging memes. You can add pictures, text, and fonts that’ll make your memes unique.
Kapwing is ideal for anyone with a limited skill set that wants to create stunning and engaging memes.
GIF-Creation Tools
GIFs can be used to further illustrate your message to your audience to gain the utmost clarity. Also, most people find them more interesting compared to static pictures.
Want to create actionable GIFs? Check out these awesome tools:
You can use Ezgif.com to great simple and actionable GIFs within minutes. The tool lets you crop, resize, and render your GIFs in different dimensions.
GifPal lets you add images, texts, drawings, and border frames to your GIs to make them unique. Also, you can render your finished designs in different video qualities.
Filmora’s meme maker is a web app with a simple and easy-to-understand user interface.
After you’ve uploaded your file to the app’s dashboard, you can add text, colors, and fonts to it. You can export and download your GIF after you’re done designing.
GIPHY simply lets you design, host, and share your GIFs with other GIF creators.
Presentation-Creation Tools
Presentations are used to inform, enlighten, and persuade. They comprise powerful words coupled with pictures and illustrations — all organized in a sequence.
Want to create stunning presentations? Check out the following tools:
Prezi is ideal for whipping up engaging, persuasive, and memorable presentations. It has a huge image library, tons of charts, and a layout that you can customize to make personalized presentations.
