Case Study: How Burger King Whopper launch campaign reached 11.6M users | #casestudy

Burger King India tied up their whopper launch with Valentine’s Day, banking on the break-up quotient of the day – roping in Sima Taparia and urging consumers to break up with average burgers. The Burger King Whopper launch campaign reached 11.6M users across all social media platforms.

This case study explores how the Burger King Whopper launch campaign, #DateTheWhopper started off with a video featuring Sima Taparia fame the Netflix series, Indian Matchmaking, followed up by a contest and other engagement tactics.

Category Introduction

India’s QSR  (Quick Service Restaurants) industry is expected to grow at 9% CAGR with western fast-food chains such as Burger King, McDonald’s, Dominos, etc. anticipated to grow 2.5 times its current rate. COVID-19 might have slowed down this growth for a few months but with changing demographics, increase in literacy, high disposable income, exposure to media, the recovery will be faster than ever. The studies have showcased that people prefer fast food not only for convenience and taste, but it also serves as a medium for social interactions. 

Brand Introduction

Burger King made its debut in the Indian market only in 2014 with a specially curated food menu for the Indian palate after conducting one of the biggest food researches.

Agency

FoxyMoron & Pollen

Summary – Burger King Whopper launch campaign

As India celebrated the day of love with the usual mush, Burger King took a different approach, terming it as the ‘season for break-ups’. They collaborated with Sima Taparia aka ‘Sima Aunty’ the matchmaker from Mumbai who became popular following her appearance on the show, Indian Matchmaking on Netflix. The video showcases Sima Aunty sharing ‘relationship advice’ on how not to settle in relationships or your choice of burger. 

Problem Statement/Objective

Burger King wanted to design a campaign that would be a part of their overall 360-degree whopper launch. Thus, the brand identified Valentine’s Day to create an engagement campaign to stand out amongst the emotionally charged advertisements while still remaining contextual and relevant.

Creative Idea

The idea was to generate buzz amongst the target consumers that consisted of a young, net-savvy population and spread the message through word-of-mouth marketing. The teams roped in Sima Taparia, the matchmaker from the very popular Netflix show ‘Indian Matchmaking’.

The idea was simple, to break-up with burgers and #DateTheWhopper, instead.

Also read: Case Study: How Cheryl’s Cosmeceuticals DIY OxyBlast facial campaign created buzz amidst the quarantined festive trail

Execution – Burger King Whopper Launch Campaign

The brand created a DVC wherein one can see Sima Aunty use references from her popular show to draw parallels between relationships and burgers. The witty dialogues (which are a spin on her original ones) convince viewers to break away from their current relationship and move on to something better.

It is only towards the end that viewers realize she is referring to boring, dry, and unsatisfactory burgers and is encouraging everyone to move to the bigger, better, flame-grilled Whoppers.

To amplify the Burger King engagement campaign, it was amplified through social media assets and contests. As an extension to the #DateTheWhopper campaign, Burger King started a contest on Instagram urging users to make memes from the video and reveal their reasons to be a part of the ‘Whopper Clan’.

The first 800 entries who tagged Burger King and used the #DateTheWhopper were rewarded.

Results

The campaign reached 11.6M users across all social media platforms. Also, the campaign received an engagement rate of 5.1% which is higher than the all-time industry engagement rate of 3.6%.

Across social media platforms, the campaign delivered phenomenal results as follows:

• Facebook: 7.9 million impressions with an engagement rate of 0.8% vs industry benchmark of 1.4%
• Instagram: 3.9 million impressions with an engagement rate of 5.6% vs industry benchmark of 3.2%
• YouTube: 55.3K impressions with an engagement rate of 1.7% vs industry benchmark of 2%

The idea to integrate the influencer’s style and brand’s tonality with a popular face like Sima Taparia really grew interested in the activity and the campaign in general. As the campaign video generated a lot of buzz, many other brands like Tinder, Netflix India, OnePlus, etc. joined the bandwagon and commented/tweeted on our post and added quirky one-liners which increased their share of voice and also helped us leverage their audience.

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