Burger King: Social Strategy

The Situation: Burger King’s social media presence wasn’t standing out. Most content was “expected” and not engaging. As a result, Burger King was declining in preference among their 18-24 y/o, Gen Z target. They needed a new social content approach that would make Burger King loved and heavily engaged with by Gen Z on social media.

The Insight: Gen Z does not follow typical demographic boundaries, especially when it comes to how they communicate on social. Three individuals might be identical on paper, but one is anime-obsessed, another is a sports junkie, and the third is a sneaker head. These interests organize within thousands of intermixed subcultures within the social space.

The Strategy / Brief: Create content that celebrates all the niche trends and moments that only specific subcultures will understand to show Gen Z that when they engage with BK on social, they’ll “have it their way.”

The Creative Platform: It doesn’t have to make sense to everyone as long as it makes sense to someone – an approach brought to life by monitoring the social conversations of various subcultures. When trends are identified that are a natural fit for BK, content is deployed in the voice of the subculture it’s created for.

The Results: Gen Z was quick to start heavily engaging with and sharing the social content we were creating. In the first year of rolling out the new strategy, earned organic impressions on social grew by 245%, conversations about Burger King on social grew by 46%, we gained 580,000+ followers across all channels, and best of all we saw a 150% growth in brand preference among 18-24 y/o resulting in a 16.3% visitation lift from the targeted group.

Awards: 2018 Cannes Lions: 1x Bronze, 3x Shortlists • 2018 Effies: Gold • 2019 Strategy Cannes Lions: 1x Shortlists • 2020 Effies: 1x Sliver

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Agency: MullenLowe

Role: Group Strategy Director

Years: 2018 - 2021

Content examples from the strategy:

Twitter content examples