Burger King Offers 'Autopilot Whopper' for Self-Driving Cars

Burger King's marketing team never misses a chance to jump on a hot trend, especially in technology. Case in point: The brand is launching a Whopper giveaway linked to automotive artificial intelligence, which “knows what you crave,” according to BK’s new ad campaign launching today and coming on the heels of the restaurant’s recent dance-based promo with TikTok, the wildly popular social media platform of the moment. The promotion is based on a video, reportedly real and seems to have been shot from behind the wheel of a Tesla, showing the car's self-driving navigational system confusing a Burger King sign for a stop sign. (A quick Google reveals no other examples of this phenomenon.) Burger King has not named the car brand in the video, and disclosure copy at the bottom of the ad states that "map displayed does not reflect actual map in vehicle. [kickout id="1"] The lesson here? “Smart cars are smart enough to brake for a Whopper." While most drivers might understandably consider that a design flaw, BK calls it kismet. To collect the free Whopper, via the BK app, consumers will need to test out this quirk of technology by driving to a BK in their smart cars and sharing a picture or video of their dashboards with the hashtags #FreeWhopper and #AutopilotWhopper. For a campaign that’s so zeitgeisty, there’s no explanation from the brand on the head-scratching use of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite as its soundtrack. The brand did not release detailed agency credits for the campaign, but listed the creators as Publicis Latvia and MullenLowe U.S. BK, which loves its high-visibility promos, has been an aggressive marketer during the coronavirus pandemic, offering free Whoppers to students who could answer math, science and literature questions and coining a phrase, “couch potatriots,” for quarantined fans who stayed on the sofa and ordered delivery (fees were waived). The brand, latching onto buzzworthy trends, rolled out its fake sausage breakfast sandwich, the Impossible Croissan’wich, to all its locations nationally last week, following in the footsteps of its massively successful 2019 Impossible Whopper debut. The recent TikTok promo, a 2020 version of singing for your supper, premiered as the decorated Moldy Whopper, showing off the brand’s no-preservative promise, snagged a healthy number of industry awards. Burger King has also poked some fun at artificial intelligence previously. In 2018, the brand and agency David Miami ran a series of ads supposedly (but not really) written by an AI, resulting in lines like "Tastes like bird." CREDITS: Burger King North America President: Chris Finazzo Head of marketing, North America: Renato Rossi Director, Media and Social Channels: Jorge Luiz R. Oliveira Social media digital marketing: Flavia Guetter Senior analyst, media: Rebecca Richardson Director of marketing communications: Rogelio Magana Manager, advertising: Rachel Williams Manager, mobile app: Preston Nix Head of marketing field: Maria Posada Burger King Global Marketing officer and global chief: Fernando Machado Head of global marketing: Diego Suarez Agency credits: Publicis Latvia ECD: Andrey Tyukavkin MullenLowe U.S. Executive Creative Director: Tim Vaccarino Executive Creative Director: Dave Weist SVP, Creative Director: Enrique Camacho Associate Creative Director: Marco Martins Associate Creative Director: Renato Barreto Associate Creative Director: Marcelo Maciel Copywriter: Vanessa deBeaumont Content Producer: Maurice Loach Content Producer: Kate Kesslering Animator / Editor: Ryan Dight SVP, Group Strategy Director: Mike Cassell Social Content Writer: Arielle Mulgrew Business Affairs Manager: Amy Keddy Project Management Supervisor: Nicole Capone Account Director: Alison Whisenant Account Executive: Caroline Bailey Layout Artist: Erinn Scammon

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Burger King Offers 'Autopilot Whopper' Promo After a Tesla Confused BK Logo for a Stop Sign

The brand says your car might know best

T.L. Stanley

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T.L. Stanley