#MobexAwards highlight: BK Indonesia lands whopper sized success through PUBG collab

Burger King is the second largest fast food hamburger chain in the world with a strong presence in Indonesia across 24 cities through 175 outlets. With its mass brand appeal to consumers aged 16 to 45 and its core social media audience aged 22 to 35 who tend to switch brands for the best value, Burger King collaborated with PUBG as the engaged PUBG gamers aged 16 to 35 with disposable income in the near future were identified as potential new customers for Burger King. Through the integration of rewards and promotion, the Burger King X PUBG collaboration was able to open new avenues for Burger King to tap on to increase its sales amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

With its media agency Mediacom Indonesia, the team at Burger King took home gold for Best use of Mobile – Gaming and silver for Best use of Mobile – Food & Beverages at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s Mobex awards 2020.

Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly affected many prime sectors across various industries, especially the restaurant industry, resulting in tumbling sales as dine-in services in standalone areas and malls had shut down nationally, due to the government implied rules of social distancing.

Being home to the largest Muslim population in the world, every year, Indonesia gears up to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan and succeeding Eid-ul-Fitr festival by feasting with friends and family. However, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had impacted the way Muslims broke their day-long fast and celebration of Eid-ul-Fitr. With a strong presence in Indonesia across 24 cities through 175+ outlets, Burger King witnessed a steep 70% drop in restaurant dine-in sales, as footfalls to their offline stores reduced drastically.

The challenge is for Burger King to recover business revenue to maintain its profitability by tapping into new avenues to increase sales. To win Top of Mind Awareness, brand building is key therefore, Burger King have to ensure that each dollar spent was able to drive its highest return.

Strategy

Historically, Burger King had varied ongoing offline promotions targeted to loyalists and new users. Fuelled by COVID world norms of staying home, Indonesia’s gaming landscape recorded a 21% increase in monthly active gamers with doubled playing sessions and increased daily average session time – when compared to pre-Covid statistics.

To tap onto the active gaming trend which was on-rise, BurgerKing collaborated with Tencent’s PUBG Mobile, Indonesia’s top grossing app to launch the BurgerKing Indonesia Mobile App. This was going to be one of the first gaming partnership that the brand’s consumers were going to witness in Indonesia.

Campaign Concept Due to COVID-19, Ramadan’2020 was going to be different from previous years. Each year the “ngabuburit activity” (leisure time which is usually spent playing outside or taking an evening walk waiting for the evening prayer call) was almost certainly impossible to do.

As such, the PUBG X Burger King Collaboration tapped into the core gaming user behavior while emphasising the chance to win. The campaign umbrella theme “Play Your Way Win Like A King” was seeded and amplified on both PUBG and BurgerKing mobile app.

Execution

Burger King Indonesia and PUBG used a creative execution to invite PUBG Mobile players to participate in the “Play Your Way Win Like A King” campaign. Gamers could win free meal codes redeemable on Burger King APP!

Gamers would also stand a chance to win exclusive Free Skin on the Burger King app. The campaign was seeded through social posts, PR & PUBG gaming community on 21 April 2020 announcing BurgerKing X PUBG collaboration.

The campaign was officially launched on 7 May and ran all the way up until 21 May 2020. PUBG Mobile gamers were automatically entitled to get free fries and drinks by simply entering a code that ccould be redeemed in the Burger King.

PUBG gamers were also incentivised to spruce-up their in-game character skins by winning cool free skins. To win the free skins, PUBG gamers had to install the BK mobile app. Once the user registers with personal data, they could “Play Shake & Win”.

PUBG co-promoted the collaboration through banners, notification and influencers through their own ecosystem. They created “Burger King Custom Skins” – A gun, BK parachute and a Cheeseburger Helmet, as part of the in-game integration. PUBG also used gaming influencers through the “Tencent Likee Mobile App” to co-create a PUBG X Burger King Challenge.

Additional buzz was generated through PR from PUBG, while BurgerKing gave them visibility through co-branded t-shirts, crowns, stickers on burgers and push notifications.  Burger King deployed a phased collaborative approach with PUBG, by showcasing a two way promotional strategy of winning free food and free skins through voucher code redemptions. This mechanism increased the visibility of food purchases through redemptions and driving installs to the brand new Burger King app that was launched.

Result

The Burger King X PUBG collaboration exceeded all of its objective and goal and the campaign was the very first digital version of gaming collaboration that the brand had successfully rolled out with zero marketing dollars spent. Burger King gained 153,000 app downloads with 240 Million Impressions garnered through KOL channels, social channels, PUBG and the Burger King app. Through the two-week campaign, the number of sales transactions in-app and actual sales volume doubled as compared to pre-campaign. Burger King also saw a redemption rate that was four times higher than its offline voucher redemption brand benchmarks