Paranormal Alert

Background

Halloween was a big party night for young people in Sweden. The aim of the campaign was to make Burger King a natural part of the holiday, both before and after the night. The idea was to create an interactive experience where young people could hang out and have fun with the brand. But also to use the website as a tactical channel to drive traffic to the restaurant, which in turn would increase sales.

Idea

Because people enjoyed scaring each other on Halloween, two weeks before the event Burger King customers were asked to go online to help see if there was any paranormal activity in any of the restaurants.

Using the in-store surveillance cameras, all participants had to do to qualify for a half-price meal was watch, control the four cameras and take a shot at the right time.

But it was all a trick.

As site visitors looked at the empty restaurants, a demon suddenly flashed up on their computer screens. Their reactions were filmed as they shot back from their screens.

Now they could see the film and share it on Facebook or Twitter. Everyone who shared their film was sent a discount code to their mobile phone as friendly compensation for having been tricked.

Results

Paranormal Alert had an immediate impact. In just two weeks the site had 45,240 unique visitors, Burger King Sweden got 25,167 new likes and over one million people were reached by the viral spread on Facebook.

Sales for the period increased by 8.5% compared to 2011.

Our Thoughts

One of our number on the editorial committee said he’d seen this idea before though he couldn’t remember where. The rest of us liked the fact that it was topical, funny and sharable. More than that, we were pleased to see that on top of the number of ‘likes’, Shout also told us the idea had sold a whole load of burgers.

David Ogilvy wrote “We sell. Or else…”. There seem to be a lot of agencies specialising in “Or else” these days so it’s good to come across one that is interested in the “We sell” part.