Black Friday is the year's biggest retail battleground, and a fast-food brand cannot outbid retailers for attention. Burger King's 'hackvertising' instinct was to stop fighting for the traffic and instead stand under it.
With agency Grabarz & Partner, BK launched Whopper-Shopper.com, a site that featured only banner ads from other brands — Walmart, Diesel, Macy's, Tommy Hilfiger and more. Shoppers created an account, clicked through and bought; Burger King collected the affiliate commission on the sale.
The clever part was where the money went. Instead of keeping the commissions, Burger King converted them into Whopper vouchers, sent as $5 gift cards after the promotion, up to three per shopper. Rival retailers' Black Friday ad budgets ended up buying customers a free Whopper.
The campaign ran through Cyber Monday 2018 and was shortlisted at D&AD 2019. It turned a day when attention flows to other brands into a day when other brands' media spend paid for Burger King's product.
Reroute rivals' ad spend to your brand
Other brands' banners supplied the traffic, so BK paid nothing for reach
Affiliate commissions made rival ad spend the source of the discount
Passing the money to shoppers made the mechanic feel like a gift
The stunt fit BK's 'hackvertising' brand story and earned free press
When you cannot outspend rivals on their day, take a cut of their spend: affiliate links turn their promotion into your media buy, and passing the commission to customers makes the brand the good guy.
Whopper-Shopper.com ran through Cyber Monday and capped participation at three vouchers per shopper. The campaign was shortlisted at D&AD and honored by EPICA, becoming a fixture in Burger King's run of brand-hijacking stunts that included the Whopper Detour.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The sources
- Black Friday Whopper Shopper D&AD Awards archive · dandad.org
- Burger King hijacks Black Friday ads to give away free Whoppers Marketing Dive · marketingdive.com ·