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Did Burger King panic?
3G Capital, the new owners of Burger King, fired their agency of seven years, Crispin Porter, and much of the Burger King senior marketing management. The brand had pursued a long-term campaign directed at delivering a male-oriented content often with sexual overtones and featured a cartoon character King. The idea was to break through the clutter with novel creative that would resonate with the heavy user of their product, notably the hungry male. It was a classic heavy-user, core-buyer strategy.
The logic to dump the existing creative was in part because it had not prevented a decline in sales which in the last year was over 3% overall and nearly 6% in the US and had gone on for six quarters. At least two reasons were hypothesized. First, strategically, in order to compete with McDonald’s throughout the day, Burger King needed to broaden the audience to include kids, families, women, and older consumers. A focus on the hungry male was limiting. McDonald’s realized decades ago that they needed to move beyond family and kids and a limited menu of relatively unhealthy fare. The campaign “loving it” that has endured for years produced an umbrella to approach a wide audience. A narrow audience target with a focused offering and loyal segment works for In & Out burger. Has it worked for Burger King? Probably not.
Second, the existing creative not only did not appeal to these other segments, it actually repelled them with its crude sexual connotations and sometimes confrontational contexts. Some of the global ads (not done by Crispin-Porter) illustrate. One, from Singapore shows a women poised to engage in oral sex with a burger with the headline “It’ll blow your mind away.” Another, banned in New Zealand, had the King dancing for 2.5 minutes giving the finger to competitors. A US ad once showed a person waking up to find a somewhat creepy King sharing a bed. Edgy advertising and promotion needs to deliver attitude, usage and loyalty as well as buzz. The sales data suggest that the results did not justify stretching the boundaries of taste and acceptance. At Davos some years ago Nike CEO Phil Knight said that as long as Nike’s then controversial messaging resonated with the core Nike customer, it did not matter did not matter what others thought. However Burger King is not Nike.
To dump the existing campaign may well be the right decision. However, it means walking away from a lot of equity and assumes that the sequel will be better. Given the decision was made with the influence of the franchise owners gives pause because they might encourage a campaign based on deals and brand-damaging promotions. Look at the advertising for the auto dealers—always price deals. In my view that would be a long-term mistake.
What will lead to success? It surely will not come entirely from new advertising. It will have to involve improving the offering making it dynamic and competitive with McDonald’s that has moved vigorously into healthier appearing menus and upscale coffees. It will need substance.
With respect to the brand vision and advertising, success often involves returning to the roots. I would find ways to put a contemporary and novel spin on “flame grilled” and “have it your way” perhaps by providing a way to tell a new product story.
Is this a case of the finance guys and the franchise owners both looking at short-term results without a brand perspective? Possibly, but I suspect their instincts are right. The question is whether they will also have the instinct to build the brand effectively in the future and the provide the talent and resources to build great supporting creative. It is not easy.
Posted March 28, 2011 / Permalink
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Whether or not they panicked or even need to undertake a different marketing strategy altogether is irrelevant. BK has problems because they have a poor product sold in unappetizing environments by poorly trained and inspired staff. No amount of brilliant marketing will work to grow the BK brand until they decide to get serious about being a more social business.
Full disclosure: We have and continue to work with several BK franchisees.
Ashish and Jeffrey, the success and dissapointment of a business always has multiple sources and the positioning and its execution is not the only problem. Jeffrey is right in that execution on its promise is particularly key given the positioning chosen and any new approch had better have a social component. Ashish corrently pointed out that product innovation is neeeded especially given the specter of McDonald's, a very tough competitor. The Pizza category does indeed provide some lessons and role models.
The bottom-line is that it is all about the product. BK has a loyal group of customers who will eat anything they make. Unfortunately, I don't believe quality is high on BK's priority list. Sometime new owners (or new client marketing VPs) fire the incumbent agency because "they can". Time for change at BK.
Hi David,
You mention that Nike can get away with targeted marketing, even to the point of offending non-target customers, but companies like Burger King cannot.
What factors/characteristics do you think a company must have in order to 'get away' with more offensive marketing?
I'm new to brand & marketing and would love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks in advance!
I think Mr Summers has nailed it. These guys need to think about the experience first, and product second. If Summers is right, there's a lot of work to do. McDonalds has succeeded because they moved out of their traditional comfort zone (i.e., the hungry male). Now BK has to take similar risks. And they definitely need to move from push to pull - not completely, but in an integrated fashion.
No Domino's didn't do it well. They still compete in a commodity market where the only point of difference is the depth of your discount. The same process, while admired for it's effort, does not produce the same results when you exist in a commodity market. The answer is not marketing. The answer lies in creating meaningfully differentiated value. Something no chain has yet done.
Mark and Will, I agree it is likely the experinece and the product. When McDonalds came out of a huge slump they first fixed teh experience and then added some successful products. The "loven it" adv would have not worked by itself. If the new owners believe that it only an adv problem they will not fix anything.
Mouy, a challenger brand with an attitutde and personality like Virgin or Nike can get away with being more edgy. Or a brand like Whole Foods with customer passionate about the prouduct also can be edgier.
Jeffrey, Dominos is interesting because they similarly took big risks with communication. If the product delivers they may get away with it but if not they will be worse off. The case if DeGiorno which tried to position their product against the delivered pizza cateogry is interesting (p. 60 in Brand Relevance).
Hey Dave. I worked in BK's advertising back in the 80's when we played David to McD's Goliath. Our focus on flame broiling and the Whopper's taste-test win over the Big Mac drove positive sales for about three years.
About eight years ago we took over Taco Bell's advertising when they realized the Chihuahua and "Yo Quiero Taco Bell" was more effective at selling plush toys than burritos.
There is no doubt that BK needs to work on their menu and experience. At the same time, they got themselves into a bind when they decided to sell an attitude instead of food.
I don't think they panicked. After 18 months of negateive sales you have to do something. But I do wonder if they have a strategy for fighting off the specialists (Starbucks, Taco Bell, KFC, Subway) and the world's largest generalist (McD's).
Greg Sieck
CPB did a brilliant job of communicating to young men. The decision to focus on that customer so single-mindedly couldn't have been theirs alone. Certainly, with eroding market share, a change in strategy was called for. But throwing CPB out with the strategy seems foolish.
Tim Munoz on Facebook make sense to me
Smart brands show different faces to different consumers, and keep a common foundation but express it differently. Geico is a good example. Humor for the younger target, comparative price-oriented messages for switchers, brand spots that reinforce service and quality, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Chasing one target at the expense of another is foolhardy. I see this problem creeping up in the new Major League Baseball campaign ... trying to go after a younger audience by appealing to their irreverence and flip sensibilities, turning baseball into a quirky personality entertainment, while walking away from what makes the sport interesting and compelling. MLB will alienate its core in a misguided effort to look hip. Why pour all this money into one campaign when you can be much more nimble, deploy multiple messages, and keep your core while expanding into other segments? How about a multi-channel approach folks?"
Bob, some feel they did not even do a great job at communicating to the core audience although I don't have the data to judge. You are right in that from the outside, it is not possible to access who did what with respect to the strategy but I think it is fair to assign major responsibiltiy for the campaign to the agency.
Greg, nice to hear from you. As I said in the blog posting, I would think that equity in the flame broiled and Whopper has to be part of the solotion. Dave
CPB tried to put lipstick on a pig by focusing attention on the King character, and using quirky humor in an attempt to make the brand relevant. By itself, that couldn't be enough. Their core issues are lack of differentiation/fuzzy positioning combined with inconsistent QSC. On the plus side, they have a decent value proposition. The chain needs to go 'back to the future' while at the same time re-inventing themselves. Re-invention isn't cheap in terms of cost and willpower. I hope the new owners have enough of both - as well as the wisdom to get their supply chain involved in the search for innovative ideas.
Ron, I agree as to the best direction and the fact that it will not be easy.
...and now they've (3G Capital) pulled the plug on their re-imaging effort. I don't think these people know how to run restaurants. Sometimes people have more money than common sense.
@ David. Totally agree that the 'Whopper' and 'flame-broiled' equity needs to be taped to save them once again. But when you attract people with such value points you have to keep them with equal or greater value points and I don't think they have it in them.
Jeffrey, it will be interesting to see how 3G does over the next one or two years. It is a tough assignment.
Whoever had the idea to use the "creepy" king to represent BK in their TV as is the one who should be fired. When BK employed the "flame broiling" strategy, they had the opportunity were successful in expoiting that point of difference. The dangerous use of a spokesman, done up in a plastic "bank robber like" face mask, I believe has been highly detrimental to the BK brand. If that was the agencies idea, they should be fired.
James, I agree but the more important fact is that the market apparently did as well.
its fair to hold agency responsible for outcome of marketing campaign but with such niche advertising campaign the company/board must also be held responsible as such decision on campaigns woudl not have been soley been advised by agency
Abhijit, great comment. Did the agency develop the stratey, believe in a flawed strategy developed with the firm, or imlement a strategy they did not believe it? In any case, they need to have some of the blame but, certainly, others do as well. Note that most of the senior mkt execs were replaced. So the blame was shared.
How do you explain that Hardees (whilst) showing "sexual" ads is doing much better than BurgerKing?
Great question. I suspect it may be do to menu and operations but I would like some input from anyone close the Hardees.
On the other hand, I thought that by doing away with the edgy advertising and be everything for everyone, Burger King was trying to appear and behave much like McDonald's. They may well have been right in focusing on a customer tribe but perhaps just didn't do enough to convince them of their products?
I personally don't think that advertising on its own could have any influence on sales - positive or negative. My feeling is that they've simply made their agency a scapegoat.
As you rightly said, they'll need to re-look at their product and the product story. Domino's did it extremely well recently and I am sure Burger King could do it too.
— Added by Ashish Deodhar on March 28, 2011