Re: ‘Whopper Lust’

This post is a reply to ‘Whopper Lust’ on Adweek.

Burger King recently partnered with Direct TV promoting “Whopper Lust” campaign; the channel viewers can watch burgers spin and get rewarded with Whoppers. It is basically a trade off of time with Whopper.

Promotion

Co-marketing
Just like Mcdonald’s with Monopoly, Burger King also did co-marketing with Direct TV. The food franchise or the media company didn’t create a new product. They just partnered up to increase their sales.

AIDA model

• Awareness: most people already know what Whopper is and where they can get the burger
• Interest: starving people with a lot of free time might be interested in watching the ads
• Desire: the longer do viewers watch the ads, the more desire to eat the burger
• Action: five minutes after watching the ads, viewers will get one free Whopper! and they will go to the nearest Burger King and get the burger out of the restaurant

However, one thing I’m concerned about is that if Burger King offered this kind of sales promotion, I think its profit would suffer. The sales promotion for Whopper is good enough with Whopper day, I believe. Also, I know that Whopper is the best selling product in Burger King, but if the company only focuses its promotion too much on one or two products, its brand image would be fixed in consumers’ brain. Well, it’s good that if people thought of Burger King, Whopper would be the first thing they could come up with. However, as I just mentioned earlier, because people only can think Whopper, Burger King without that burger would be like nothing. Personally, Whopper is the only thing I can come up with when thinking of Burger King. Anyway, what if its product life cycle is at decline stage? This Whopper Lust campaign is really a creative sales promotion, but I think it would be better that the company promotes its other products as well so that people become more aware of the other burgers.