Burger King Is Replying to Complaints About McDonald's on Facebook This clever marketing campaign gifts free food to disgruntled McDonald's customers.
By Matthew Humphries Edited by Jessica Thomas
This story originally appeared on PC Mag
If a brand wants to stand out from the crowd it needs to get a bit creative with its marketing campaigns, especially on social media, and that's true even for the biggest brands. Burger King's latest marketing tactic? Target Facebook users complaining about McDonald's.
As Adweek reports, advertising agency Uncle Grey launched a new and clever social media campaign for Burger King Denmark recently targeting its biggest rival McDonald's. The clever part is the fact the campaign didn't target McDonald's directly, instead focusing on disgruntled customers complaining and commenting on McDonald's Facebook page.
Customer service agents working for Burger King were tasked with reading and responding to complaints about McDonald's and its service. The responses are all "fun," but more importantly include a link to grab a Whopper for free. As an example, one McDonald's customer complained about waiting for two hours at a McDrive, to which Burger King responded with "Well, everyone can have a slow day in fast food. Here's a quick Whopper."
"Customer service is a big part of the entire guest experience, and we haven't been doing a good enough job in taking care of our guests online," said Daniel Schröder, marketing director at Burger King Sweden and Denmark. "When addressing this, we realized there are even more burger fans out there that deserve a reply. We did what we can to help out, hoping some flame-grilled Whopper love can help make things better again."
We'll be able to tell how well this campaign worked by waiting to see if it gets copied by Burger King in other regions of the world. It also comes alongside a pledge by the company to respond to all queries on Facebook within 48 hours, which should stop McDonald's considering copying the idea is some form.