5 Lessons Burger King Learned by Unleashing the Moldy Whopper

Since I praised Burger King's Moldy Whopper ad in a previous blog post, I thought it apt to follow-up with an article that discusses some lessons learned (along with initial campaign results).

Published by AdWeek: 5 Lessons Burger King Learned by Unleashing the Moldy Whopper.

The article starts off with the challenges of being a CMO:

"Most CMOs have much more pressure on short-term goals than on the long-term ones. But in reality, they are equally as important. Making the brand 'future-proof' requires one to create a vision about how the future will be. If you manage to get to the future first while managing the cost of that journey successfully, chances are you will capture a disproportional amount of market share in the process. Losing that race may end up being costly for your brand. In some cases, being second to something means you end up carrying a lot of cost without getting much credit for it."

So, how has the Moldy Whopper fared thus far, in terms of short term (and potentially longer-term) goals? Surprisingly to some, sentiment toward the ad was largely neutral to positive: 



The article goes on to disclose specific engagement stats and benchmarks from social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I won't repeat them here, but in short: the ad exceeded goals and benchmarks on ALL fronts. Part of this had to do with the fact that the creative was customized to each platform, which helped keep things fresh and avoid ad fatigue. As the article concludes, however: 

"But did people get it? // The short answer is: Yep, most people did."