Advertising
After sneaking into people's homes, Burger King has managed to sneak an award from right under Fearless Girl's nose at the Cannes Lions, advertising's biggest annual gathering. Back in April, the fast food chain created a sneaky TV spot that served as a hack for Google Home. The ad featured the phrase "OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?," which triggered any Google Home device within earshot to start reading out aloud from the Whopper Wikipedia page.
On Tuesday, the "Google Home for the Whopper" campaign nabbed the Grand Prix in the Direct category at the Cannes Lions. The campaign, developed by agency David Miami, was up against State Street's "Fearless Girl" on Wall Street
statue by a margin of one vote, reported Adweek.
The hack essentially ended up turning the chain's 15-second spot into a 30-second spot - without the additional ad buy. It was both invasive and effective at the same time, with one jury member calling it "the best abuse of technology," according to Adweek.
People began messing around with the Whopper's Wikipedia entry soon after the spot was released, calling it "the worst hamburger" and saying it was made out of a "medium-sized child" instead of a beef patty. And Google too applied the brakes on it, stopping the commercial from activating the devices by the following day. But even that didn't deter the ad from becoming a viral sensation.
"It gets to you in your living room. It messes with you. It was just outstanding, outrageous, simply incredible, and we loved it to bits," said jury president and chief creative officer of Dentsu Brand Agencies, APAC, Ted Lim.