Brand
Burger King ads
Burger King's best ads, from Subservient Chicken to Whopper Detour and Moldy Whopper: apps, stunts and open letters, many of them aimed at McDonald's.
All ads
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2020Moldy Whopper
Fast-food advertising has always shown burgers at their most glistening; in 2020 Burger King showed its Whopper rotting.
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2019Burn That Ad
Burger King Brazil's answer to a rival that, by its own account, outspent it four to one: turn the rival's advertising into Burger King's.
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2019Stevenage Challenge
Burger King put its logo on the shirts of Stevenage, a club at the bottom of English football's fourth tier, knowing the kit would be reproduced in…
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Order a Whopper for a penny — at McDonald's.Burger King2018
Whopper Detour
The best use of a competitor's real estate in marketing history.
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2015McWhopper (an open letter to McDonald's)
Burger King's peace offering to its oldest enemy, made in public.
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Whopper SacrificeBurger King2009
Whopper Sacrifice
A Facebook app that put a price on friendship: delete ten friends and get a coupon for a free Whopper.
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Get chicken just the way you like it.Burger King2004
Subservient Chicken
The weirdest literal brand idea ever to work: "Have It Your Way" became a man in a chicken suit who obeys typed commands.
Burger King’s advertising
Burger King's most studied work rarely lives in the commercial break. Its entries are websites, apps, newspaper pages, posters and even a club shirt inside a video game, and many are built from the rules of someone else's platform.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky set the tone. Subservient Chicken turned "Have It Your Way" into a man in a chicken suit who obeyed typed commands, and Whopper Sacrifice gave away a free Whopper for deleting ten Facebook friends, until Facebook disabled the app.
Later work, from agencies including Y&R New Zealand, FCB and DAVID, keeps turning McDonald's into the medium. McWhopper proposed a ceasefire in a full-page open letter, leaving the market leader with no reply that didn't help the challenger. Whopper Detour sold a one-cent Whopper that unlocked only near a McDonald's, and Burn That Ad let customers in Brazil set fire to McDonald's billboards in augmented reality to reveal a voucher. Stevenage Challenge found free media inside FIFA 20 by sponsoring a fourth-tier club whose kit the game reproduced.
The most daring entry turns on the product itself. Moldy Whopper showed a Whopper rotting over 35 days to prove that it no longer contained artificial preservatives, trading appetite appeal for trust.