New Zealand is a fairly unique market for Burger King.

Firstly, it has the highest penetration of Quick Service Restaurants per capita of any country in the world, so competition is fierce.

Secondly (and more surprisingly), despite our core differentiator from our competitors, research uncovered that most New Zealanders didn’t believe that BK actually cooked their burgers over flames!

Our research showed that New Zealanders associated flame grilling with freshness, taste and quality.

So the brief was clear – by driving increased belief that BK flame grill their burgers, we could drive incremental improvements in all around perception around the brand.

This perception is crucial as BK have an almost 100% conversion rate from ‘consideration’ to ‘purchase’. We just had to find a way to get people to consider us by making them believe in our flame-grilled approach.

This summer, hundreds of New Zealanders were given the opportunity to open a Burger King in their own backyard and cook burgers the way Burger King does – over a flame grill.

Each ambient Backyard Burger King event saw an incredible, personalised kit delivered to winners. Effectively the kit was a Burger King restaurant in a box - complete with ingredients to make 16 Whoppers, customized cooking utensils, hat, apron, matches and even a light up Burger King street sign. Everything people needed to make our signature Whopper, except for one important ingredient: a flame grill. To open a Backyard Burger King, all you needed was a barbecue.

Up and down the country we turned our customers’ homes into the home of The Whopper. Over the course of the summer we opened 55 new Burger Kings in backyards, work sites, offices, airfields, and even an army base.

Via TV, digital, social and in-store messaging, consumers were invited to apply for their very own Backyard Burger King at www.backyardbk.co.nz. If selected, they were supplied with an incredible kit – a Burger King restaurant in a box. Complete with ingredients to make 16 Whoppers, customized cooking utensils, hat, apron, matches and even a light up Burger King street sign. Everything they needed to turn their home into the Home of the Whopper.

5 of the activations were filmed with a professional crew to create shareable content and drive further entries. Consumer generated footage and photos were collated on www.backyardbkfanhub.co.nz and used to create the summation TVC at the end of the campaign.

Throughout the campaign, everything we did was aimed at creating engaging social content – both in the hero pieces we made and also from the UGC that our many Backyard Burger Kings created.