Burger King hadn’t released Funnel Cake Fries since 2010 but had this snackable item on the docket to relaunch in 2019. Fortunately, the “10-Year-Challenge” just so happened to be the latest viral trend among our target audience of 18 to 24-year-olds, which gave us the idea to do our own version, but with a twist. So the brief we created was how we could relaunch Funnel Cake Fries for the first time since 2010 in a bold, social-first way with the objective of generating a ton of organic buzz around this modern classic menu offering.

To relaunch Burger King’s Funnel Cake Fries for the first time since 2010, we committed the ultimate social sin—liking people’s old posts on Twitter and Instagram. But we didn’t like just any old posts; they were influencers’ posts from 2010. We knew the randomness and bizarre nature of this move would perplex even the savviest social users and influencers, and give them a notification worth posting about. By accurately predicting how they would respond, we were able to turn a social behavior into a launch tactic that tricked some of the most influential social icons into helping us set the stage for the relaunch of Funnel Cake Fries. Ultimately, we influenced the influencers.

There’s an unwritten social media rule around liking someone’s old posts. To put it simply, it’s taboo, especially with our 18 to 24-year-old audience. When you like someone’s old posts, it suggests that you’re being a creep and “lurking” on their old stuff. Even though social media promotes this lurking behavior simply by its design, it’s never a good look to like someone’s old posts. Knowing this social truth, we saw how it could generate real reactions from influencers if Burger King randomly began liking their old posts from 2010.

In the days leading up to the product’s restaurant debut, we prelaunched the campaign by liking influencers’ old posts from 2010 on Twitter and Instagram. Once influencers like JoJo, Kreashawn, and Casey Neistat started taking the bait and posting about it, we posted our product launch tweet the next day, letting everyone know the reason behind the move—to bring back Funnel Cake Fries for the first time since 2010.

After Casey Neistat found out why we were liking old posts, he released a YouTube video talking about what we had done. In his video, he asked us to make things right and possibly help out his favorite charities. We obliged. We made a donation to two charities he supports and gave away free Whoppers to his fan base. We fulfilled this by creating a promo website in 24 hours hours, and sending gift cards to those who participated.

With this simple idea of liking old posts, Burger King was able to relaunch Funnel Cake Fries in a way that got the Internet buzzing about Burger King’s latest move and product.

• 532 million total impressions

• $5.32 million in earned media

• 389% increase in brand campaign conversation