Long Live Burger Kings Commercial’s and Gamification

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson has long encouraged retail foodservice operators from grocery store service deli’s, convenience stores, fast casual restaurants, fine fast restaurants, furniture stores, drug stores, and fast food restaurants to incorporate the FIVE P’s of food marketing into their brands with consumer focused interactivity and participation.

Burger King has a new interactive participatory TV commercial that does just that. Yes, the marketing team at Burger Kings has found a way to reach into your home and extend the TV commercial. (See the link to the AD below).  This is brilliant! It might also be a bit disturbing but brilliant none the less. It’s not they kind of gamification our Grocerant Guru® so often speaks of, but it is voice technology and interactive.

So basically Burger King is going to “Hack Your Google Home Device” press reports say.  I have a Google Home, I like it and have tried playing this AD and I can tell you it works some times.  I don’t know if  my laptop speaker was not loud enough or clear enough.  But I did not get the answer I or Burger King wanted.  My devise is still leaning.  I’m wondering if they should have started with Amazon’s Alexa? She is fantastic.

Burger King is leveraging voice technology and attempting “to highjack viewers’ voice-activated speakers to prolong the commercial” according to press reports.  Here is how it works according to press reports:

Prompted by an actor in the commercial saying, “OK, Google, what is the Whopper burger?” the intention is to trigger a Google Home device that would then begin to describe a Whopper from a Wikipedia entry, according to a demo.

“You’re watching a 15-second Burger King ad, which is unfortunately not enough time to explain all the fresh ingredients in the Whopper sandwich. But I’ve got an idea,” an actor says before asking Google to describe the sandwich.”  Like I said in my case playing the TV spot off my laptop it did not work as well as I would have liked”  but then again I’m kind of a nerd about this stuff.  Here is what is important.

In January as regular readers of this blog know we began with an blog titled Can Mobile Augmented-Reality Save Full Service Restaurants a couple days later we wrote a blog titled  Mobile Marketing + Virtual Retail vs Foodservice Brick and Mortar Retailers.  We wrote those blogs because the team at Tacoma, WA Foodservice Solutions® believes food marketing, food branding, and customer interaction has forever changed.  Technology and consumer adoption of that technology had driven that change.

Consumer’s overwhelming adoption and migration of smart phone technology including voice have driven rapid adoption of both Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Home devices. Burger Kings leadership in this marketing foray is to be commended. While it is not working perfectly nor is it understood fully how customers will react.  It is a stepping stone to a closer understanding of consumers, marketing reach, and voice ordering.  While this is an invasive tactic it is and will continue to garner consumer and industry buzz. 

Burger King would be well served to offer anyone who comments a free Whopper or by working with Google Home offer Google Home devise owners a reward for listening?  What else do you think Burger King should do to capture leader ship in this space other than partner with Amazon or Google for more proactive interactivity?  We have several ideations do you? 

Do your marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may the clue you need to propel your continued success.