Y&R New Zealand helps Burger King launch global campaign to extend an olive branch to McDonald’s in honour of Peace Day – Sept 21
Burger King is calling for a ‘burger wars ceasefire’ with their longstanding rival McDonald’s, proposing that on Peace Day, 21st September, 2015, the two restaurants set aside their differences and join forces to cook and serve the ‘McWhopper’ – a peace-loving burger that combines all the tastiest ingredients from the McDonald’s Big Mac and the Burger King Whopper.
In keeping with the global and collaborative spirit of the campaign, Y&R New Zealand has worked with multiple agencies to make the proposal happen – NZ based production companies: Assembly, Fish, Liquid Studios and Resn alongside Burger King and its US & global partners ABPR, Code & Theory, DAVID, Horizon, Rock Orange and Turner Duckworth.
The McWhopper peace proposal launched today with a full-page ‘open letter’ from Burger King to McDonald’s appearing in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The letter extends a friendly, no-strings invitation to McDonald’s to participate in the project, and invites them to visit mcwhopper.com to view the full Burger King peace proposal and everything from packaging suggestions to recipe ideas.
Peace Day, 21st September, is a United Nations recognised annual day of global unity, successfully advocated by the non-profit organisation Peace One Day. Founded in 1999 by Jeremy Gilley, Peace One Day has the ultimate goal of institutionalising a global day of peace.
Burger King is hopeful McDonald’s will accept the offer and collaborate with them to raise awareness and increase engagement with Peace Day, on 21st September, at a pop-up McWhopper restaurant in Atlanta – the halfway point between Burger King’s Miami HQ and McDonald’s HQ in Chicago.
Senior Vice President for Global Brand Management at Burger King Corporation, Fernando Machado, says the idea is big, bold and very Burger King: “Y&R NZ brought us this audacious concept back in early 2014 and since then this project has been a true collaboration among several agencies based in different locations and our partners from Peace One Day.
“It is great to work on something that is good for the brand and has the potential to positively affect society. We all really hope that the collaboration can now extend to McDonald’s. We have the chance to make history together if they say ‘yes’. And if they say ‘no’, at least we raised awareness of Peace Day, which is the ultimate objective of the campaign.”
Y&R New Zealand CEO/CCO Josh Moore says the campaign is the result of perseverance, late nights, and an 18-month collaboration with the global Burger King marketing team.
“When we first tabled this idea with Burger King we knew it was a long shot – asking a global icon to take their hero product and blend it with that of their biggest competitor,” says Moore. But we’ve been totally overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and appetite for big thinking and bold ideas at all levels of Burger King. I only hope McDonald’s jump on board and make this a monumental event in the name of Peace Day. Let’s end the beef, with beef.”
Burger King’s ‘McWhopper’ peace proposal campaign will be rolled out in the US, the UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and New Zealand.
Today the McDonald’s Facebook page has been quite active since their CEO responded rather condescendingly to BK via social media:
Omar Gilani Wow McDonald’s… what a shame. A simple gesture of good faith turned down so passively aggressively. Not sure I had any respect left for the company but this just overdid it.
Mimi Walker Szegda Ending the ‘Burger Wars’ on Sept 21st would be a fun, unique way to raise awareness all in the name of PEACE. Shame on you McDonald’s for your lousy response.
Fernando Lourenço McDouche, McLame, Quarter Loser, Big McPetty… yeah, I could go on and on… you just disapointed the whole world McDonald’s
Avery W. Krouse There’s just enough snark and haughtiness in this reply from a company that is quickly losing market share, cash, and public goodwill to make me understand why people are hating you more and more every day. Burger King, for good or for ill, has presented one of the most unique and fascinating ideas in fast food history and you’ve basically turned your nose up at it. Good job, McDonalds.
And YouTube just posted McWhopper to their twitter feed.
The YouTube Twitter feed has over 54 million followers.
For more information on Burger King’s ‘McWhopper’ peace proposal visit mcwhopper.com and for more information on the objectives of Peace Day visit peaceoneday.org
Client: Burger King
Agency: Y&R New Zealand
CEO / CCO: Josh Moore
Creative Director: Tom Paine
Creative: Tom Paine
Head of Planning: Jono Key
Account Director: Victoria Meo
Agency Producer: Liz Rosby
Agency Producer: Sacha Moore
Digital Producer: Melissa Logan
Senior Designer: James Wendelborn
GM Media (Auckland): Nicky Greville
Media Planner (Auckland): Marie-Claire Manson
Animation company: Assembly
Film company: Flying Fish
Music / sound design: Liquid Studios
Post production: Mandy
Digital production: Resn
Packaging: Turner Duckworth
Media (U.S): Rock Orange
Activation (U.S): DAVID
Digital (U.S): Code & Theory
PR (U.S): ABPR
Media (U.S): Horizon
45 Comments
I’ll go first. That’s a great idea.
Gotta say, this is probably my favourite idea of the year.
Well done Y&R, I am officially jealous.
Who needs scams when you can do this.
Holy shit. Well done everyone, awesome idea and awesome execution. My (early) vote for Grand Axis.
…when it was a student idea from Media Design School using Pepsi and Coke. Hope you’ve given those guys credit.
Surely the students who came up with the Pepsi/Coke idea are interning at Y&R? Everyone at the MDS show saw that idea (executed EXACTLY the same as this, for the same client), it would be madness to steal so blatantly… Y&R, please clear this up….
RE “This was better…”
You know you’ve got a great campaign when someone leaves a comment on an industry article saying that someone else thought of it first.
Well played, Y&R + Burger King. Great campaign.
But a great, big idea that makes them so rewarding.
Great work Y&R. Jealous.
Good work getting this up. I have seen at least 5 ‘lets get two rival brands together for world peace day’ ideas over the last 6-7 years that have died at the last moment because of a lack of guts from the clients.
Not an original idea by a long shot, but the suits that got this sold in should get a raise.
Hmmm. I too saw this idea in a student book a couple of years ago. Y&R, what do you say?
Tom, you finally got it out and it’s fucking awesome. I hope you win everything.
Tom has been hawking this idea since 2011. The interns who had the pepsi idea know he had it first. let’s not make a storm in a clamshell.
Yes I saw a similar(ish) idea when two students brought their book into the agency, at which point I went straight to my desk to retrieve the sizeable document that had been prepared about a year prior to this encounter. I shared it with them in order to avoid this exact scenario. Ask them and they will verify. End of story.
in thinking that trying to hijack World Peace day for obesity causing junk food is really rather tacky?
Mean as.
(ex)MDS guy here – Can confirm that we came up with the same idea independently and found out from Tom when we showed him our book.
Congrats on getting it made! Looking forward to seeing how it goes.
@am I alone. No, no you’re not alone.
@Nope and @Am I Alone – did you know about this world peace day prior to this campaign?
I certainly didn’t, but thanks to this campaign I do now.
Yes, yes I did. There was quite a lot of noise about it last year. Lots of articles written, lots of discussions about its goals.
None of these included selling more burgers btw.
Like.
So good. Congrats to all involved.
http://ewanandgeorge.squarespace.com/#/peace-one-day/
but the first to get it made, wins…
Jeremy Gilley, the Peace One Day founder, said: “This proposal from Burger King is the corporate sector at its best – coming together, putting their differences aside and saying: ‘come on; let’s do something to manifest a more peaceful, sustainable world’.
“Over the next 100 days, let us stand with the millions of people across the world who are suffering the devastating impact of violence and conflict. Let us share ideas and plans for helping and supporting them in their time of dire need.”
Footnote: Let’s not totally undermine this via some adwank idea involving burgers, clever though it may be.
Bloody well done. You pulled it off.
The idea is great but the ambition and scale of getting it done from NZ is even better. Hats off to all involved.
A good serve doesn’t a great tennis match make.
So far, Maccas hasn’t responded as anticipated.
It has achieved squat until Maccs agree to play.
So far, you have one heck of a ‘wedding proposal’ but the way I see it, the bride didn’t say “Yes’.
Sounds like a burn for BK.
But a self serving ‘feather in the cap’ for Y&R.
So this is what world peace means to advertising types: award fodder.
This is a great idea but I’d love to know how they got a global marketing team to sign this off.
Josh I hope you’ll tell the whole story at some point. Also lets celebrate world class work coming from outside Colenso / DDB. Healthy for the industry
Dishonest, facetious and flippant brand….trying to profit from what is a serious and never ending quest: world peace. Sleazy too.
Why should I eat your nasty burgers and endanger my health….is there no other way to achieve ….ummm….world peace?
Great idea-and I can confirm that Simon and James, the student team who did the Pepsi & Coke idea years ago, came back from seeing Tom Paine gutted because he pulled out the document showing them that he’d already had the same idea.
Brilliant… someone, who knows who, comes up with an idea for Peace Day…. and then war breaks out between a bunch of ad guys squabbling over who came up with it first.
I’ve seen that idea so much I now Wonder: is it really that good if every student and his dog has had it?
It wasn’t an olive branch. It was a gun to the head.
Everyone who claimed they had this idea should take a leaf out of their own book and credit it to MDSY&R etc and then they can all share the award peacefully.
Go on guys, give peace a chance. MDSY&R.
You might think differently if you could see the execution
Hilarious. A pack of desperate creatives fighting over the credits for an idea about promoting peace. Funniest thing all year.
The idea is sort of cute but like a lot of NZ ads these days it’s got a feel of adland in-joke about it, I’m not sure that most people outside our industry would really care about this ‘war’.
You know you’re all squabbling over who deserves pointless paper weights and industry rankings that mean nothing right? While you all bitch and moan over who deserves to go to Cannes there are lives being taken and children being orphaned. But hey the real issue is whether or not Tom ‘stole’ this idea.
Some would say it’s slightly distasteful that BK ran this but those same people should use it as a platform for debate. No doubt this was a monster to get off the ground so congrats Tom, hopefully this raises awareness and helps foster a turning point in society and create a better world for our children to live in or at least a flame grilled Big Mac.
This is great.
Apparently some students from the uk came up with the idea –
http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/did-burger-king-rip-off-these-junior-creatives-for-the-mcwhopper-campaign/92351
As well as 7 other agencies including y&r –
http://www.adweek.com/agencyspy/7-agencies-and-burger-king-troll-mcdonalds/91959
Looks like it could win the award for the longest ever credits list.
Not to take anything away from our local team. Jus say’n
Yes, it’s a very, very, very old idea. Probably best left alone to die. Lets all move on.
This campaign is truly awesome. Jealous.
Many people may have thought about it but only one agency had the perseverance / skill to get it made. Well done Y&R, a pity no one is talking about the great execution, that site is awesome.