Storyboard: Burger King's Cast of Characters

Burger King hopes fast-food fans will relate to its Lunch Break campaign evolution.

By Mary Boltz Chapman, Editor-in-Chief -- Chain Leader, 1/1/2005

There’s an ensemble cast of quirky characters, understated humor and plenty of catch phrases. Is it a new sitcom on NBC? No, it’s an ongoing series of Burger King commercials.

Miami-based ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which won the burger chain’s account in January 2004, debuted the Lunch Break campaign in February. Set in an office, the commercials feature a group of co-workers who, like the characters on Seinfeld, seem to get along, but at the same time, they’re not very nice to each other.

Brian Gies, Burger King’s vice president, marketing impact, says, “We challenged CPB to make the brand and new product news more relevant to our consumer.”

Crispin Porter + Bogusky wanted to tap Burger King’s “Have it Your Way” tagline. “There’s a trend toward mass customization,” says Andrew Keller, vice president and creative director at the agency. “Everyone is looking to express their individuality. We wanted to use products, show people the ways we use our lunch to express ourselves.”

The Noon Whistle
An office is a natural lunch environment, Keller adds. “We were looking for an environment that made lunchtime kind of a hero. It’s a drab environment. People are repressed in being able to express themselves,” he explains. “They can use Burger King to say something about who they are at that important time of day.”

In the first spot, “Champion,” a man distributes Whoppers, reading off the custom ingredients as the co-workers congratulate each other on their choices. When he rattles off, “no lettuce, extra ketchup, double bacon, double mayo and two extra beef patties,” the person who ordered it throws his arms into the air, yelling, “I am the champion!”

The characters have developed as the commercials show them ribbing each other, stealing each other’s food and trying to outdo one another. Keller says it’s difficult to build a character in a 30-second spot, but viewers have gotten to know them. They and the setting have become part of the brand.

“These people are experiencing Burger King real time,” he says. “They’re more engaged with the product than selling it. It’s real time as real people would be engaged.”

Gies says, “What I find most interesting is the amount of great content we get from our cast ad-libbing. We have a full script, but what we end up using is lines or expressions they use. It’s spontaneous, in the moment.”

While Gies is unable to tie results directly to any one campaign, he says Lunch Break has been “an important contributor to the brand’s momentum. The campaign has done great things for grand recall, message recall and likeability.” Burger King saw its 10th consecutive month of positive U.S. same-store sales in November: 8.6 percent at franchised restaurants and 14.2 percent at company restaurants.

The sitcom appeal of the spots reached an apex when Crispin Porter + Bogusky created a 2-minute commercial spoofing the emotional ads that preceded the final episodes of Friends and Frasier. The Lunch Break spot, which ran for a short time in May, showed flashbacks of previous commercials and scenes of the characters sharing tender moments. At the end, it promised, “We’ll be back.”

For Kids of All Ages
At the end of 2004, the Lunch Break gang was back, hawking $1.99 watches as part of Burger King’s tie-in with The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. The characters were showing off their watches or wasting company time talking about them. But grown-ups selling cartoon-character watches?

Keller says SpongeBob is popular among the chain’s fans: 18- to 34-year-old fast-food users, which skew male. “It was very difficult to say our target would like these watches. We don’t want to have to explain it.” By using the Lunch Break characters, “We showed that we understood that they would like these watches,” he adds.

The SpongeBob ads were expected to end in mid-December.

Lunch Break cast members will return to the air in January, Gies says, promoting a limited-time Angus product for four to six weeks. After that, they will be included in Burger King’s “new and improved” product launch.

“As long as it stays fresh and relevant, we’ll continue to keep it in the mix,” Gies says of the Lunch Break campaign.

Keller agrees: “Pop culture wants to change. Lunch Break is destined to lose relevance. But we can evolve it or shake it up. It has to keep proving itself.”

Burger King will continue to intersperse the campaign with others. Last year, the company also spent its estimated $200 million advertising budget on a series of commercials that had the Burger King character touting breakfast; the Subservient Chicken, an online “viral campaign” in which the user tells the chicken what to do—dance, lay an egg, whatever—and the chicken obeys, which was launched April 8 and is still logging 20,000 unique hits a day; and Chicken Fight, spots which led up to a Direct TV “free per view” on Nov. 5.

“Champion” Length: 30 seconds
1. Joel: Who had the Whopper with double lettuce? Background voices: Nice job.	2. Joel: Double cheese, double onion? Background: Nice.
3. Joel: No lettuce, extra ketchup, double bacon...	4. double mayo and two extra beef patties?
5. Jason: Whose can that be? Mine? Because I’m the champion?	6. I’m the champion! I am the champion!
7. I am the champion!	8.