We literally put the power of fire (a main BK brand asset) into consumer’s hands: we developed a new feature on Burger King’s app that recognized competitor’s advertising and, using augmented reality, burned the ads gifting consumers with a free Whopper voucher. All they had to do was to spot a piece of advertising, point their phone at it and collect the voucher for a free, flame grilled Whopper.

Anything could be burned: social media posts, internet banners, menu boards, tray material, coupons, out of home media – basically everything that featured our main competitor’s non-flame-grilled products. So, we developed our media tracking those advertising places and privileging our main burning tool – people’s smartphones.

On March 18th (2019) we invited people to download/relaunch their Burger King app via BK’s social media profiles. We also disclosed the activation on Google UAC formats (focused on app download performance) and search. During one day of the same week, we aired a simple “tutorial video” of how to burn competitor’s ads on the subway TV network – one of the main places where our main rival had ads to be burned.

As their advertising was everywhere and people always had their smartphones with them, burning ads became a new sensation. That way, we turned every McDonald’s ad into an ad for Burger King.