The idea was simple. Selling Whoppers in a country with no BK presence. This way the public opinion would realized how much the brand meant to them and how far they would go to taste a Whopper again, achieving that BK return would be something “desired” instead of “unexpected”.

STORY: An entrepreneur selling burgers, polemically called like those from a big fast-food corporation, who left our country dramatically.

MESSAGE: We partnered with local massive communities to release the rumor. Also partnered with influencers, not for publishing on their public fanpages, but for sharing on their private Whatsapp groups, where more influencers and media members belong, so the message felt real and not paid.

VALIDATION: The dealer delivered the Whoppers, but also charged for them ($5). This made people felt the service as real, without loose ends. He also asked for pictures of the delivered burger encouraging people to have digital proofs of the Whopper, to ease sharing them on social networks.

RESOLUTION: We made BK Worldwide contact the dealer, not to sue him but to offer him a job on the first new restaurant in Costa Rica, achieving good publicity and officially announcing their return.

TIMELINE: 15 days

OBJECTIVES: 1) Reach the sales forecast established by HQ for the opening month 2) Prevent a potential backfire to guarantee a successful re-launch

MARKETING RESULTS: 1) During the opening month, the sales surpassed in more than 1500% the forecast established by BK Worldwide HQ, what also meant that during this month the Costa Rica first restaurant became the worldwide #1 BK restaurant (among 14,320 around the world) in sales per capita. 2) During the first month, the local BK Facebook community achieved +158,329 fans, showing this way a clear increase on empathy with the brand.

OTHER RESULTS:

5,534 Whatsapp messages received per day.

2,307 orders delivered per week.

1,750,000 social media mentions.

The Whopper Dealer is the story of a character selling Whoppers, via Whatsapp only, in a country without Burger King. To give live to the character and his story, we spread his contact number among Whatsapp groups and Facebook communities so people could contact him.

From there, a one-to-one communication started among the dealer and the target, who talked with him, asked for Whoppers and interacted during the different phases of the campaign. This campaign focus towards Whatsapp messaging platform as main media for spreading the message and interacting with the customers and the media.

TARGET: Men/women from 18 to 54 years old

We created a character “from the people” that would show how much everyone missed the product, same character that later the brand would decide to support as sign of the goodwill personality they bring back this time, showing BK as a modern, open-minded.

The Whopper Dealer is a guy that sells Whoppers so similar in taste to the originals (actually cooked by the official BK kitchen), that also the most skeptical would be curious. An entrepreneur that sells only through its personal Whatsapp number.

To make the story catchy to news media and make it big we needed 4 ingredients:

1. A powerful story that could be shared organically.

2. Massive channels to spread our message but without it feeling paid.

3. Validation among the real people that used the service.

4. A resolution that makes the brand look good.

SITUATION: In 2015, BK closed overnight in Costa Rica. As a consequence, 29 restaurants were closed, 434 persons were laid off and severe damage was caused to the brand’s image.

BRIEF: The challenge was to relaunch the brand in a highly competitive market, while creating a campaign that could reconcile with the target and clean the brand’s image to prevent a potential backfire. All this with a release budget of only $10,000.

OBJECTIVES: 1) Reach the sales forecast established by HQ for the opening month 2) Prevent a potential backfire to guarantee a successful re-launch