Is Whopper The Only Burger You Can Name From Burger King?

YANG LIANG
Marketing in the Age of Digital
3 min readJul 12, 2022

We know McDonald’s and Burger King are two common brands in the market. When it comes to them, people will think about which burger from which store they want for today’s launch. According to QuerySprout, McDonald’s offers healthier options and better chicken nuggets as of 2022. Burger King is promoting its burgers and provides good customer service.

Why BurgerKing Sweden Revamped Its Menus to “Not Big Mac’s”?

An Irish fast-food chain called Supermac’s had a legal battle with McDonald’s. It led McDonald’s to lose its trademark for the Big Mac in the EU. The result told that any other company has authority to use the “Big Mac” on its menus even though the big fast-food giant McDonald’s still keeps this name.

Therefore, Burger King, a significant competitor of McDonald’s, acted quickly to update its burger menus. For example, Burger King’s Swedish operation renamed menus to poke at McDonald’s loss. The customers were surprised by the name “Not Big Macs,” and the items were for a limited period. Some products’ names were inspired by McDonald’s Big Mac. In conclusion, Burger King engaged in newsjacking with new ideas based on the competitor’s legal slip.

Here’s a list of what we got from the revamped menus:

  1. Like A Big Mac But Actually Big
  2. Burger Big Mac Wished It Was
  3. Kind Of Like A Big Mac But Juicer And Tastier
  4. Anything But A Big Mac
  5. Big Mac-Ish But Flame-Grilled of course

Familiar with Newsjacking

In the previous, I mentioned newsjacking because Burger King took full advantage of using this tool, and we want to explain further what newsjacking is and provide understanding. First of all. David Meerman Scott coins Newsjacking. It uses this tool to add your thoughts and opinion to the relevant stories. A brand likes to create content or campaign that engage with a well-discussed item. According to “The New Rules of Marketing and PR,” newsjacking aims to get noticed and let the buzz you create in both social media and traditional outlets drive business. The benefit of using this strategy is to help a brand or a firm get discovered by relating with break news.

Jump on at the right time

I think it is effective. First, Burger King jumped on McDonald’s news before other competitors. The breaking news itself mentioned negative aspects of Big Mac Trademark. Burger King effectively uses big mac’s access to the European market to add uniqueness to its products. Second, It can attract customers’ attention and put you in front of new audiences. Last but not least, Burger King displayed an example of how a brand takes advantage of new relating to its competitor in a funny, but professional way.

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