We Believers won a Golden Lion at Cannes Lions with a campaign for Burger King Mexico. The brand spoke with Merca2.0 after the success.
We Believers is a strategic advertising agency that is seen in Mexico, since large advertisers have entrusted it with the creative work of their communication.
With a piece that featured a new Burger King product, We Believers made it clear which commercial campaigns are taking its place at Cannes Lions.
The 2022 edition of the Cannes Lions Festival The next step in the advertising industry has become very important. Miguel Ángel Amézquita, Communications Manager and Óscar Alcántara, Marketing Director for Burger King Mexicospoke with Merca2.0, to explain how they came up with a campaign that stands out for the originality of its creativity and the management involved in turning ideas and insights into a piece without waste, thanks to We Believers.
Merca2.0 – What elements helped the brand stand out at Cannes Lions?
Michelangelo: For Burger King it is essential to have a long-term strategic vision. Creativity converges with listening and understanding the guests. ‘Non Artificial’ Mexico is the result of work done many years ago where, both in Mexico and in other markets, we share a fact: we have understood the functional and emotional benefit that Burger King means in different countries.
What we do is work on communication in your language, with a perspective that makes it more attractive and practical. We are a brand where we value collaboration and innovation, we are always listening to creative, media, research and public relations agencies because, more than work teams, we consider them partners.
We are talking about working together to make an interdisciplinary collaboration and this is what has made Burger King a recognized name in such a competitive industry and in an event as important as this.
Oscar Alcántara: The search for reality, both for the brand and for the campaign. In the end, ‘Non Artificial’ Mexico has its origin in a project that has real food and natural as a flag (100 percent natural menu) and the campaign captures it in an equally natural way, with real people, in natural and everyday situations, which creates an immediate connection with the audience, which makes it very memorable for anyone .
Merca2.0 – What ideas were the ones that were discarded and helped to reach a piece that won with We Believers?
OA: The reality is that we do not discard ideas, the team of We Believers he managed to capture the essence of the project from day one and translated it into a creative concept that made sense to everyone from the start. Of course, there was an important later work, with adjustments of ideas, twists and turns to reach the deliverables of ‘Non Artificial’ Mexico. But the idea was clear, to communicate our 100% real menu, we needed a 100% real campaign.
MA: ‘Non Artificial’ Mexico is a campaign that has been cooking on our grill for more than three years. The entire Trust in Taste project, that is, having preservative-free ingredients on our menu, is years of work to ensure that any innovation on our table is free of all artificial ingredients.
From then on, we worked hand in hand with our suppliers to come up with new formulas and gradually ‘release’ our ingredients to deliver exactly what our claim says: a 100% preservative-free menu with an authentic flavour. Although, since last year, we launched communication in a disruptive and creative way through ‘Whopper without artificials’, we decided to make the official announcement once we managed to clean the entire menu.
This news was a watershed for the brand and I’m sure for the industry. I can tell you that Mexico is one of the first markets in the world that has achieved 100% of its menu without artificial additives and the idea of We Believers is as authentic and careful as we did with our ingredients.
It is a very big and powerful idea, we decided to launch it until we fulfill our promise to deliver a menu free of artificial ingredients and as real as what happens on our streets in Mexico.
Merca2.0 – In the brief, what helped clients to highlight what they really needed from a campaign?
OA: The involvement of the We Believers team was very important, to fully understand the project that fueled the campaign and all the work behind it. Being an iconic project for us, it was important that the campaign to communicate it also be so, and with Non Artificial’ Mexico it was more than achieved. We believe that it is an execution that, although it focuses on what is real and natural in everyday life in Mexico, maintains the essence of the brand’s communication.
MA: The basic thing in this and any brief is to understand the business objective and how this objective solves the needs of our guests. This is the spearhead for our communication partners, the creative, public relations and media agency.
Our partners took this objective and captured the needs of our guests: feel good with what you eat. And we go beyond the restaurant experience, service and atmosphere; they have in their hands ingredients of the highest quality, as we have always done, but now with a benefit that very few in the category can offer: free of artificial ingredients.
This objective should not only remain in a brief, it is a long-term vision that walks with time and that permeates the decisions of everything; how to choose one idea against another, or how to choose the production house so that their vision goes hand in hand with ours and is linked to the original idea.
It also permeates all downloads, for example, the media plan that best meets our objective. In this case, ‘Non Artificial’ Mexico won the OOH category, which involved a detailed exercise by our E-Track agency in evaluating that, although there were real people in the photographs, the exterior where they were placed had to have that realism to achieve the traffic we were looking for. , that consumers see the piece of communication and identify themselves.
On the other hand, it also influenced taking these pieces of photography to a museum. The above strengthened and gave more respect to the concept: to show real people, who are the center of some strategies for the Burger King business to work. Taking them to a museum was to dignify and thank our guests for letting Burger King continue with the fire of its grill stronger and more real than ever.