Fast-food ads usually show the perfect burger: shiny bun, fresh lettuce, no flaws. In 2020, Burger King did the reverse. Its ad was a time-lapse of a Whopper slowly decaying, going from fresh to covered in mold, over more than a month of filming. Sources give the length as 34 or 35 days.
The point was a message, not a joke: Burger King food uses no preservatives. The company said it had removed artificial preservatives from the Whopper in most European countries and some U.S. markets, and the WPP case study says it had removed 8,500 tonnes of artificial preservatives from its products globally over the previous three years. A burger that molds is proof, in the most visual way possible, that nothing artificial is holding it together.
The campaign was made by the agencies INGO, DAVID Miami and Publicis Bucharest, and it was first released in Sweden in February 2020. Marketers argued about it, because putting a rotting product at the center of an ad breaks the oldest rule in food advertising. That argument turned out to be part of the plan: news outlets covered it as a story, so it reached people far beyond what its paid media could.
The numbers were large. According to WPP, the campaign delivered a 14% sales increase, 8.4 billion impressions, $40 million in earned media value and an 88% rise in positive brand sentiment. It won major awards, including a Cannes Grand Prix and the One Show’s Best of Show. It shows that an ad can be memorable by being honest about something most brands would rather hide.
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