Moldy Whopper
Burger King2020
Moldy Whopper is a 2020 print and outdoor campaign (with film) for Burger King, created by INGO Stockholm, David Miami and Publicis.
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The line
The beauty of no artificial preservatives.
Why it works
Fast-food advertising has always shown burgers at their most glistening; in 2020 Burger King showed its Whopper rotting. Time-lapse photography followed a burger for 35 days as it slumped and furred over with mould, and the print and outdoor executions simply labelled the stages, Day 28, Day 32, Day 35, to make one claim: the Whopper no longer contained artificial preservatives. Burger King's marketing chief had sat on the idea until the recipe had been fully reworked, so that the proof would be real. It is studied as a calculated act of brand courage, deliberately making the product look disgusting in order to make it look honest, and as a test of whether a brand can trade appetite appeal for trust. The agencies reported 8.4 billion impressions and a 14 per cent sales lift. It won the Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes in 2021 plus Gold Lions in Print & Publishing, after Gold Pencils at the 2020 One Show.
Techniques
- Demonstration Time-lapse photographs of a Whopper rotting over 35 days prove the claim that it no longer contains artificial preservatives.
- Shock and provocation Deliberately making its flagship burger look disgusting, furred with mould, breaks fast-food convention to force people to stop and look.
- Ethos By trading appetite appeal for visible honesty, the brand asks to be trusted precisely because it shows its product at its worst.
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