The McWhopper proposal

Background

The campaign objective was to raise awareness of Peace Day on 21st September, an annual day of ceasefire and non-violence created by the United Nations General Assembly to strengthen the ideals of peace with and among all nations.

Idea

On the 26th August, Burger King published a full-page open letter in The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune calling for a ceasefire in the 'burger wars' with their longstanding corporate rival, McDonald's. BK proposed that in order to raise awareness of Peace Day, the two restaurants should set aside their petty differences and join forces to cook and serve the 'McWhopper', a symbolic, peace-loving burger that would combine all the tastiest ingredients from both the McDonald's Big Mac and the BK Whopper. The letter concluded by inviting McDonald's to get a more comprehensive understanding of the proposal at McWhopper.com – a hub of shareable content featuring everything from a packaging proposal to a pop-up restaurant design.

Results

Public sentiment was overwhelmingly in support of Burger King's proposal, so when McDonald's contentiously (and somewhat predictably) turned down the offer, tens of thousands of people responded by creating their very own DIY McWhoppers; reviewing and sharing them on social and mainstream media to an audience of millions.

The official McWhopper evolved into a product significantly more epic than the initial proposal. Burger King received unprompted counter-proposals from four other competitor chains, big and small: Denny's, Wayback Burgers, Krystal, and Brazilian eatery Giraffas. Together the five restaurants created the 'Peace Day Burger', a mashup burger containing a key ingredient from each restaurant's signature sandwich, which was served amidst considerable publicity at the Atlanta pop-up on Peace Day, September 21st.

Within two months, the campaign had been featured on every major news outlet and social platform, resulting in over 5 billion media impressions and more than USD$125 million in earned media. Percentage increase of Peace Day awareness looked to have increased significantly.

Our Thoughts

What makes marketing so difficult today is when you launch an idea in social media, you really don't know what's going to happen next. It takes nerve as well as not a little trust in your agency. Here's a case in point. Having launched the idea in an open letter, if McDonald's had said 'yes, okay, we're up for this', it would have been pretty much the end of the story. But gloriously and predictably they didn't, which led to some fabulous content from vloggers and bloggers. Angry Grandpa got nearly 700,000 views, Buzzfeed got 1.2m and (my particular favourite) 'Francis Reviews The McWhopper' (https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8f9NUbxbsWo) got 1/2m views.

They must have hoped that McDonald's would play into their hands and would have been punching the air when they did. From that moment on, the campaign was in the hands of the people and they made damn sure it went global.

Brilliant.