Kuwait, where meat is king, witnessed a behavioural change as their youth embraced plant-based lifestyles. Vegetarian alternatives were notoriously disappointing and often failed to match their meat equivalents, leaving a meat-dominated region with few options for the growing number of flexitarians.

The Brief: to launch Burger King’s plant-based range, a menu of three products, in an authentic way and as a brand promise since 1954 "Taste is King”, address the biggest barrier: the compromise on taste.

Main objectives were to acquire a new customer base, lead the plant-based narrative in Kuwait and intensify Burger King’s positive brand sentiment.

Business indicators:

· Increase overall sales mix by 4%

· Increase average daily orders per restaurant by 17 additional orders across 84 restaurants

Brand indicators:

· Sustain positive brand sentiment around the brand promise: “Taste is King”

· Increase brand engagement by 10% and attract a new customer segment on social media

As one of the leading QSR brands in Kuwait, we decided to challenge the conventional communication across the category through a creative execution that portrayed our campaign promise, in a fun and unexpected way.

To get to the Kuwaiti's hearts and stomachs, we went for the killer entertaining combo: comedy, drama and football. Through an unusual mockumentary, we introduced the story of Cristiano Ronaldo's doppelgänger, a naive but overconfident guy who thinks he is as good as his famous lookalike. Creating a fun and unexpected juxtaposition between him and the product, establishing a final and compelling message: 'Some things just aren't as good as the original, BK's new Plant-Based Range is.'.

‘As Good As The Original’, was descriptive enough which led to an easy call to action, making people to actually want to try the new Plant-Based range and ultimately make them come back for more.

70% of Kuwait’s population are under 35 - the Kuwaiti youth are influenced by social media, and so was our media budget.

To introduce a range with three new plant-based products we had to excite people to what’s coming whilst also educating them on the range. We created experimental content to show how our new product range behaves exactly like the (original) meat based range. Followed by censored paparazzi shots of the greatest-footballer-of-all-time, or lookalike if we’re being honest.

To convey our message around an uncompromised taste we introduced Burger King’s mockumentary featuring the doppelgänger of Kuwait’s beloved footballer, Ronaldo.

We leveraged TikTok with Ronaldo’s lookalike reacting to trending content, that is not as good as the original. Content creators started joining the movement and making it their own.

We produced 1 main TVC shot in Bulgaria, BTS stills, main KVs for OOH with the main cast and additional characters to build the story, as well as short social content series to target youth.

The campaign ran across social platforms, with a primary focus on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat & TikTok, to support our efforts in driving a conversation and gaining engagement. We also heavily invested in digital to drive traffic to our app and web for online purchasing since over 60% of our sales come from these channels. Lastly, to gain higher visibility across the country, we also invested in OOH and cinema. All 84 stores had POS branding, including menu boards, packaging, digital screens and drive-thru.

The campaign ran from 15 Feb until 4 April 2022 in Kuwait only.

In only 6 weeks, Plant-Based range contributed to 8% of Burger King Kuwait’s sales mix

Average daily orders increased by 27 orders (almost double our KPIs)

Burger King Kuwait became the 4th market in EMEA with the highest sales ranking of the plant-based range, whereas other larger markets had taken 1.5 years to reach similar sales figures

Flexitarians and vegetarians from neighbouring countries (KSA & UAE) demanded the plant-based product range to be added to their local menus

Over 10M impressions; 70% engagement rate; over 1,000 new organic followers

Over 10K of new web and app purchases through social media only