Eat Your Words
Oporto
Issue 59 | June 2021
Agency
Leo Burnett Sydney
Creative Team
Creative Directors Laurent Marcus, Kim Jerbo, Malcolm Caldwell, Ian Broekhuizen
Production Team
Media Agency Mindshare Production Company Leo Burnett Director/ Dop Tommy Thoms Editor Arun Surendran Flame Editor Aleks Manou Head of Production Adrian Jung Producer Lucy Appleyard Junior Editor Arun Surendran
Other Credits
Group Head Belinda Drew Business Director Alex Barkworth Senior Business Manager Isabella Best Head of Strategy Dan Pankraz
Date
January 2020
Background
How do you launch a vegan burger when you are Australia’s most famous chicken brand? People are sceptical about vegan food even though Oporto knew that when they tried their new vegan burger they loved it.
Idea
Increasingly, people feel like they can say anything they want online with no consequences. The idea was to turn vegan haters into spokespeople for the new product.
When the new Oporto vegan burger was launched in social media, as predicted there were plenty of haters, even though they had never tried it.
Those haters were invited for a ‘product tasting’ but were not told it was to taste the vegan burger. Nor were they told they would be served their own comments laserengraved onto the burger bun, nor that they would be made to ‘eat their own words’.
Their positive reactions were filmed and posted online. When anyone else posted a negative comment, they got their comment served back to them as engraved on a digital burger with a voucher to try a vegan burger free. So they too could eat their words.
Results
Eat Your Words, became Oporto’s highest performing social campaign ever.
Likes: 534% increase. Comments: 77% increase. Shares: 355% increase.
The original sales target was doubled, even matching sales of Oporto’s bestselling chicken burger. There was a 4% growth across all vegetarian items across the business.
Our Thoughts
In the old days, consumers sat at home and consumed. They didn’t answer back when you spoke to them and they certainly didn’t offer opinions on your product and service.
Today, a well-directed tweet from a wellknown personality can give any marketing director heartburn. When President Trump tweeted “Don’t buy Goodyear tires” they would have been aghast in Acron, Ohio.
This, then, is what every social media manager would love to do, confront the trolls and get them publicly to apologise.
The nay-saying influencers can get away with reversing their original opinions because, of course, to err is human.
When brands err, well, they get cancelled.