Burger king — Google Home of the Whopper
It only took burger king a few seconds, but that was enough to come into our houses and leave holding an award. With an innovative and extremely shocking new ad campaign burger king ended up to be the winner of the Direct Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions Festival 2017.
They managed to buy a fifteen second spot but they made it last much longer. The ad begins with the camera focusing on a Burger King employer wearing a uniform. As he leans into the camera he is asking the audience a simple question.
“You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich,” Then, he proceeds with the real question.
“But I got an idea. O.K. Google, what is the Whopper burger?”
The actor’s voice was enough to activate all the Google Home devices that existed in the near area. While Burger King is not the first to notice that you can take control of someone else’s smart speaker, it is the first who risked and used it into a run ad campaign. Google Home speakers that kept getting triggered by accident answered the previous question.
“The Whopper is a burger, consisting of a flame-grilled patty made with 100 percent beef with no preservatives or fillers, topped with sliced tomatoes, onions, lettuce, pickles, ketchup, and mayonnaise, served on a sesame-seed bun.”
By the time the ad went viral Burger king had to deal with two major problems. First of all, Google admitted that she wasn’t a part of this campaign and tried to intervene in order to stop the speakers from replying. Secondly, Google’s answers about Whopper are based on Wikipedia information. The fact that everyone can write and edit Wikipedia took quickly a dark twist. As soon as the ad was released, people started modifying the ingredients. In a disturbing way people could ’’abuse technology’’ and invade into each other’s houses. Some people felt violated and others thought that it was a genius ways to promote something.
Wikipedia’s new information about Whopper made the campaign ever more popular. For example, the audience replaced the word beef patty and wrote that “the worst hamburger” is made out of a “medium-sized child”. Therefore, Google was running the chances of saying something extremely inappropriate. People described it as an editing war.
Burger king had a purpose to provoke and innovate. They succeeded in reaching audience’s personal places in order to catch their attention. It is an interesting, outrageous campaign. They righty said that ’’ it was a direct marketing in an indirect way’’.
Overachievers: Maria Griva, Maria Kall, Antonis Katsis, Eva Constantinou, Nickos Pan, Thanasis Papadopoulos
