The campaign echoes food quality, sustainability, diversity and is indicative of the trend of “natural beauty” arriving, at last, to fast-food marketing.

In the ad we see a food stylist’s hands assembling with haute-cuisine gestures a center-staged burger on a black background. The entire message changes at DAY 1 when Aretha Franklin’s voice sings “what a difference a day makes…”. Now we know that this is a different fast-food ad, a different burger, a different target group.

The ad almost looks like a challenge, the one no fast-food brand wants to take, and it shockingly unravels the 34 days decaying process in an elegant and proud manner, while we keep hearing the word “different” repeated on the soundtrack (an amplification effect being created). The ad builds an oxymoron between the beautiful beginning and the decaying process and it ends with the burger covered in mold and the written statement THE BEAUTY OF NO ARTIFICIAL PRESERVATIVES. The context changed from fast-food (highly stylized, processed) to natural food (potentially disgusting, ugly).

BK CMO, Fernando Machado, is known for challenging the status quo in advertising, and by showing food decaying, the message is that no-preservatives food is “beautiful”, but it is built with a sense of humor and irony, in a “disgusting” environment. 

The ad makes an appeal to logic (logos) by stating “no artificial preservatives”, it makes sense that this is a healthier burger. BK is famous for having competitor references in its campaigns. For a fast-food brand to drop “no preservatives” is a showstopper, with a hint to the competition (innuendo) - McDonald’s became known in the 1990s for food that never decomposes. Ethically (ethos), the ad is wrapped in good intentions, has a revolutionary spirit, makes a moral argument and highlights BK’s sustainable behaviors. A decaying burger may seem counter-intuitive to ethos-building in the food industry, but the final tagline demands respect and future-proofs the brand. The dominant rhetoric appeal of the ad is pathos.

The way INGO, DAVID and Publicis have used pathos to evoke emotions is risky and creative. The strongest emotion detected within the conversations surrounding BK, according to www.brandwatch.com, was disgust. It is this risk that made the ad worthy of the audience’s attention (according to www.adweek.com, we are exposed daily to 5.000 – 10.000 ads) and of the Black Pencil Award.

In the 2 weeks after, the #MoldyWhopper had over 21.4M impressions, and the campaign generated a ”14% sales increase, 8.4 billion impressions and $40 million in Earned Media Value – as well as an uplift in positive brand sentiment of 88%”, according to www.wpp.com. The ad ends with a pathos shot, the music intensifies, the voice sings “…I know in my heart, that the difference is you” - what better way to appeal to emotions than speaking from the heart? The viewer is in a state of shock and the final message builds correspondingly, stating that the Whopper has no artificial preservatives. 

If the viewer is already a client of BK this ad is telling the burger got healthier. But there are chances that the viewer is not a BK client, and is instead interested in food without preservatives. BK is clearly targeting their current target group, but healthier, no preservatives burgers appeal to any audience. A more responsible audience, one that would be pleased to see that BK shares the same values. BK proved that it listens and succeeded to make its initiative “top-of-mind” for consumers. 

Food for thought: is “…the difference is you…” referring to the certainly different Whopper or to the clients that drive and demand change? 

Image source: https://creativepool.com/publicis-groupe-romania/projects/moldy-whopper-for-burger-king

Video source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ef7xw2J500