In mid 2020 one of the UK’s biggest rappers, Tinie, released his summer anthem Whoppa.

The track’s name and chorus sounded a lot like our burger, the Whopper – and we knew that we needed to collab.

So we did what any self-respecting burger brand would do and slid into Tinie’s DMs and asked if he wanted to collaborate.

The only complicating factor was a global pandemic and the biggest social disruption in living memory.

Given the constraints around Covid social distancing, any kind of collaboration that involved in-person activity was off the table.

So we filmed Tinie with 700 cameras, shrunk him to 1/100th of his size, and put him on Whoppers in AR.

Tiny Tinie not only gave a live-music-starved audience something to smile about during lockdown, but also drove consideration and purchase for BK.

Important, because like many businesses with physical stores, BK’s sales were struggling due to the pandemic.

2020 was the year like no other. And research told us that our target audience of 18-35 year olds were some of the hardest hit. They were most likely to feel alienated, and have a sense of being left behind by the pandemic. Whilst not seeing friends and family was core to this, it was also exacerbated by not being able to do the things they love. As a segment that are most likely to go and see live music, and go to festivals - they were approaching a summer that for all intents and purposes had been cancelled, and morale was at an all time low.

Our strategy was to boost morale, by bringing music to the people when the people couldn’t go to the music.

The activation launched with on-pack stickers in the UK, Colombia and Puerto Rico.

For two weeks anyone who bought a Whopper in these markets simply scanned the on-pack sticker and got an exclusive gig from Tiny Tinie in an AR browser experience – turning our iconic burger into a stage for the first time ever.

People posted about it, building interest. Then we opened the experience up to people everywhere by sharing the experience across social. People in over 80 countries launched the experience for themselves – bringing the BK brand and live music into homes all over the world.

It also helped Tinie promote his new single in markets all over the world, in a highly talkable way.

In a world with no live music, we started a world tour with Whoppers as our stage.

Tiny Tinie gave our audience something to smile about during lockdown. He also drove consideration and purchase for BK at a time many of our restaurants were closed (but not delivery services) due to the pandemic.

With McDonalds still spending the big bucks in terms of media spend - our aim was to generate saliency and get more people ordering Whoppers. With a limited budget, we managed to increase searches of Burger King by 138% from pre to mid campaign - and importantly we saw a 6% increase in AUV (average unit volume) for Whoppers during the campaign period, stealing market share from our competitors.

The campaign scored 401 million media impressions, was featured in over 200 publications, and Tiny performed on Whoppers in 82 countries.