Burger King CMO: Campaigns without creativity are just wallpaper
Burger King global CMO Fernando Machado says creative campaigns that link back to brand strategy underpin its shift from delivering billions of impressions – to billions of impressions that drive results (Marketing Week).
Key points
- Burger King is winning awards – and selling more burgers
- Whopper Detour won Direct Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Lions, and drove highest footfall in Burger King restaurants in 4.5 years
- Also gained 1.5m app downloads in 10 days
- Sales through app tripled
- “We are not in the pursuit of random ideas. We’re in the pursuit of ideas that will link back to our business and brand strategy, which have clear targets and objectives,” - Fernando Machado
- “Not all campaigns will do everything, but they should be doing something in the direction of the objectives you have.”
- Campaigns without creativity become “wallpaper” that nobody notices
Burger King’s marketing has been on fire – literally – in recent years. And it’s helping to shift product; same store sales were up 2.2%, ahead of analysts expectations, per its most recent quarterlies.
Its continued attacks on McDonald’s customers and advertising (getting customers to ‘burn’ McDonald’s ads via an augmented reality app, offering them 1 cent burgers when they are within 600 feet of a McDonald’s via the Whopper Detour campaign) are both smart and funny. And must annoy the hell out of McDonald’s.
The creative approach also gives Burger King a much bigger bang for its marketing buck – people share its ads naturally, as Machedo notes, reducing reliance on paid channels. Meanwhile the app data - customer gold - feeds back into the marketing machine.
“The most successful brands,” he says, “manage to be relevant in pop culture, they manage to carve out a space in people’s minds, they make the strong stronger and they deliver a business result.”
More food for thought.
