#BurgerGoals
Burger King's viral marketing campaign put Messi in a 4th division jersey and took Stevenage Football Club to the world.
Stevenage Football Club. An English 4th division side whose proudest moment was a 5th round FA Cup exit. Yet, Stevanage is one of the most popular teams on video game EA’s FIFA over the last two years.
Burger King, owned by Restaurant Brands (QSR), became the team’s primary jersey sponsor. Aside from the BK logo smacked in the middle of the club’s “ketchup and mustard” kits, the club built out the #TheStevenageChallenge
Every gamer who uploaded their greatest goals in the team’s jersey was eligible to win food prizes from Burger King. Videos of Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappe all donning the now famous red and yellow went viral. Over 2 weeks, 25,000 goals were uploaded online, generating 1.2b impressions on the club’s social media platforms
The club, which struggled to get 3,000 fans to a match, sold out of jerseys almost instantly. The campaign won “three yellow pencils” in D&AD’s annual awards; the most prestigious design and advertising awards globally.
In a similar campaign, burger chain Wendy’s (WEN) embedded their message into video game Fortnite’s ‘food fight’ game mode. Wendy’s prides itself on its fresh beef. One of the features of the game is to destroy freezers filled with beef which fit perfectly into Wendy’s core message: “save Fortnite from frozen beef’. Videos of gamers smashing fridges in honour of Wendy’s increased the company’s social mentions by 119% as 1.5million minutes of such footage was watched online.