Burger King has a longstanding history of trolling rival McDonalds. It is a way of showcasing product superiority, pushing a more engaging tone of voice with the desired target audience – and of course, having a little fun.

Influencers have become the buzz word in marketing - with brands engaging social media stars to endorse products in return for freebies and cash incentives.

We turned this concept on its head by flame grilling one of the most iconic music stars on the planet - and attacking our main rival at the same time.

Normally, when a competitor is given public love by a superstar you back off. Grit your teeth and leave them to it.

But not Burger King.

The brand went all in and transformed a potential PR headache into its biggest social activation of 2018…

When Kanye tweeted “McDonalds is my favourite restaurant” – we flame grilled him and our longstanding rival with just three words…. “Explains a lot”

This said everything without saying too much. Less is more especially with our audience.

We developed an overarching audience-based proposition for Burger King on social that was based on creating a simple reaction; we wanted our fans to see our content and say “Yes Burger King!”.

Yes, only Burger King would dare do this.

Yes, Burger King understands me and my world.

And Yes - Burger King is the brand for me.

We knew how our audience was viewing Kanye West through a social listening programme – they loved his music but found his opinion fairly questionable.

By playing with such an iconic celebrity in such a controversial way – we set the scene for huge levels of engagement and conversation with media and across social.

The activation was a real time response on Twitter and relied 100% on organic reach across both social and earned media.

This was a simple yet powerful activation that cost literally nothing to achieve.

All it took was confidence a little bravery and some quick thinking.

With zero paid media – the Burger King tweet, Explains a lot, travelled across the globe – with people sharing, tweeting and reporting on Burger King across social media.

We achieved over 200 pieces of earned media coverage across TV, print and online media with titles including The Daily Mail, The Sun, Fox News adding to the conversation – as did titles that directly engage with our millennial / Gen Z audiences NME, Esquire and Cosmo.

This was a truly global activation with coverage secured across the world.

Explains a lot became the most liked tweet by a brand of all time – achieving over 1 Million likes!

All the conversation was 100% positive from fans and media alike.

Included below are further stats and sources from the activity.

- Over 1 Million likes (Source Twitter) – the most liked brand tweet of all time.

- 270K+ retweets (Source Twitter) – driving a huge reach of advocates.

- 1.8 Million engagements (Source Twitter) – demonstrating huge brand love.

- 47 Million Twitter impressions (Source Twitter) - showing the size of the conversation that was truly popular.

- $5,935,076.00 Media value (Source Cision) - from just three words, this was a colossal amount of earned media.

- 536,769,063 Media reach (Source Cision)

- 1.5 Billion impressions (Source Cision)

And global fan love for Burger King with almost universal positive sentiment.