Why Is Burger King Hijacking Other Brands With Affiliate Marketing?

In its latest marketing stunt, Burger King is hijacking other brands’ Black Friday digital marketing campaigns by leveraging the affiliate marketing model, an area where spending is expected grow from $5.9 billion this year to $6.8 billion by 2020. Consumers are probably not aware of affiliate marketing, which pays a commission to websites that generate traffic and sales via links, but many are distrustful of advertising. Pulling back the curtain on a not-widely-understood area of digital marketing could lend an air of authenticity to the Burger King’s campaign. At the same time, turning over the commissions Burger King earns to shoppers is likely to generate goodwill.

Offering free Whoppers for shopping via Whopper-Shopper.com  could be a draw for holiday shoppers who are also Burger King fans, as 57% of consumers plan to shop online via their computers this holiday season and 42% via mobile, according to Citi Retail Services.

Burger King continues to debut clever marketing campaigns that highlight injustices, skirt the rules and capitalize on other brands’ marketing efforts in unique ways, a strategy the brand refers to as “hackvertising.” Last year’s “Google Home of the Whopper” TV ad earned the brand an estimated $135 million in earned media by triggering the built-in Google Assistant on any Home device that heard the ad to read the Whopper’s Wikipedia entry.

The BURGER KING® brand is hijacking the biggest shopping week of the year, by making other brands buy you a WHOPPER^® sandwich. How is this possible? Introducing WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com, a new website from the BK® brand that only features online banner ads from other brands so that they can be the ones to pay for your next WHOPPER® sandwich.

How does this work exactly? When somebody clicks a banner on a website and buys something from a brand, the owner of the website gets a percentage of the sale from that brand. With WHOPPER-SHOPPER.com, each time somebody clicks on one of the banner ads and purchases something, the company pays the BURGER KING® brand money. Money that BK® will give back to our guests in the tastiest form we know –with WHOPPER^® sandwich vouchers¹.

The fast food marketing is growing increasingly competitive, and brands, like Burger King, are turning to stunts to set themselves apart and build brand loyalty with Gen Zers, who are more likely to visit fast-food restaurants than older generations.

Credits