MSL The Practice- Social Media Focused Campaign of he Year

Company: MSL The Practice, Bucharest, Romania
Company Description: MSL The Practice is the most creative and the most awarded PR agency in Romania, with more than 300 awards and nominations for more than 150 communication campaigns, made for companies in various fields. The agency is part of MSL Group and locally, it is part of the largest communication group, Publicis Groupe Romania.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Social Media Focused

Nomination Title: Valentine's Day for Unofficial Relationships/ Burger King

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: February 11, 2020

It's the campaign that prompted marketing people say "I want something like Burger King did".

BRAND CHALLENGE

Everybody knows Burger King, but in Romania, at the time of this campaign, it had just entered the market and only had 1 restaurant. Its traditional competitors: McDonald's had over 80 restaurants and a 25-year presence, while KFC also had over 80 restaurants and a 23-year presence. The brand needed to put a strong foot locally and to engage Romanians quickly and massively.

OPPORTUNITY

Valentine’s Day= Facebook feeds flooded with roses, plushies, dinner offers, movie offers... Boring, boring, boring. So the perfect moment for Burger King to be true to its brand personality. We did it byshowing what everyone knows, yet no one talks about: relationships are not all flowers and love, they are much complicated than that. So we puta complicated, yet worldwide-famous relationshipout there in a relatable way.

OBJECTIVE

Create buzz around Burger King during the Valentine’s Day period on Facebook, Romania’s most popular social network. And we only had one chance to go big, or else to get lost in the feed, between thousands of posts.

INSIGHT

Brands celebrate Valentine’s Day in the Hallmark Way: flowers, candy, plushies, dinner and a movie. But relationships are more complicated than this: sometimes they’re messy, sometimes they’re complicated, sometimes they do not work at all.

So we had to show just that, by setting ourselves up as an example.

IDEA: V-DAY FOR UNOFFICIAL RELATIONSHIPS

We decided to show, not tell, that relationships are complicated, especially when it comes to the BK, McDonald’s and KFC love triangle. And we all know that things are serious when you update your Facebook relationship status, so we had to do just that. Zero budget.

McDonald’s wouldn’t probably answer our call and KFC would try to burn us, proving that relationships are indeed complicated.

EXECUTION

A simple, honest Relationship Status Update on Facebook: "It's Complicated with McDonald's & KFC".

The engagement started instantly. As expected, KFC had answered with “seen” and McDonald’s didn’t reply at all. But... the story flew right away as people started to wish for this relationship to happen and pointed out how they would contribute to make it happen.

We grabbed this opportunity and we upped the game in the comments section, by creating a mock-up classified ad for businesses who wanted to jump in. Over 900 brands interacted by promoting their business connecting it to an imaginary wedding between Burger King and its competitors. “I bring the flowers”, “We bring the catering”, “We rent you the car”, “1-10 betting odds they break up”, “Best outfits for the ceremony and for a potential divorce”, “We’re ready for the Burger Baby!” and so on.

People started engaging in the comments and sharing our post, making it viral in just a couple of hours. And the engagement grew bigger and bigger over the next few days and even weeks as well.

IMPACT

Itbecame the social media campaign of the year. The first time in Romania when almost every big brand + smaller brandsinteracted with a branded post at this level:

Security companies, transportation companies, restaurants, photographers, soft drinks, banks, pharmacies, home appliances, media outlets, car brands, fashion brands, flower arrangements, singers, museums, ride sharing companies... Coca Cola, Sprite, Old Spice, Sensodyne, National Geographic, Beko, OTP Bank, Greenpeace, Phillips, H&M, Jaggermeister, Bolt, Avon... the list is too big to finish.

Romanian Police offeredmodified handcuffsfor a three-person relationship, the Interior Affairs Ministry offered a trained dog as a Best Man, the Romanian Aerial Forces offered a two-way flight to the ninth heaven, abusiness managementfaculty offered to manage the wedding. Add the Romanian Postal Company, the National Competition Council, the Audio-Visual Council, mayorships, political parties...

-Over 717,000 Engagements (109,000 reactions, comments & shares + 608,000 post clicks) + other tens of thousands of reactions to brands' comments
-79,000 total reactions (on post & on shares)
-21,681 total comments(on post & on shares)
-8,675 total shares(on post & on shares)
-2,106,248 reach (1 in 5 Romanians on Facebook)
-Over 900 brands involved
-1,600% ROI
-13,000 new followers (160% page growth on the recently started BK Fb page)
-Neighboring countries picked up the format and used it with their main competitors as well
-10.6% sales increase vs previous weekends
-V-Day menu + 36% sales increase over estimate