Burger King ~ Purple Whooper

For this project, I chose to write about Burger King and their new limited-time menu, the Addams Family Favorites. As I was scrolling through Instagram, an ad popped up for a free purple whooper this Thursday, so naturally I was interested. As a broke college kid, I'm not going to turn down free food, even if it is purple. Currently, Burger King seems to be the talk of the town, and not in a good way. When I typed in a quick Google search “X posts about Burger King”, the results were full of negative comments. From “Burger King Responds to Post about ‘Unacceptable Experience’” to “Irate sheriff calls for backup after Burger King messes up his order”, things don’t seem to be going well. 

Burger King’s value proposition is to provide a diverse range of food quickly and affordably. This new menu goes right alongside their food diversity options, as all four items are new for a limited time. Burger King frequently changes their menu, with new foods being created every few years and the best seeing the permanent menu, like Chicken Fries. 

Beginning on October 10th, Burger King is running an Addams Family-themed menu. This new menu includes Wednesday’s (purple) Whooper, Morticia's Kooky Chocolate Shake, Thing’s Rings, and Gomez’s Churro Fries. BK launched this new menu to try and do something remarkable that has never been done before, mass-produce purple hamburgers for public consumption. They also are Newsjacking from the Addams family movie, a high-grossing and popular film that peaks in popularity during this time of year. They began teasing the new menu on September 30th and have already posted about it 9 times, almost every other day. All nine of these posts combined have received just shy of 34,000 likes. When accounting for the 1.9 million followers, this equates to .18% consumer engagement. 

On Instagram their main post about the Addams Family menu was on October 10th and received 13.6 K likes and 312 comments. The comments were mostly positive, stating that the food was good. Burger King barely responded to any of these comments, positive or negative. The most common thing people were commenting on was that this menu replaced the ghost whopper. It was mentioned at least 30 times, with Burger King refusing to comment on any of them. Darkseidd commented, “My local BK has had the menu since Monday and I’ve tried it all, it's delicious.” to which BK responded, “you rule”. Then, I saw four comments in a row, “ Bring back ghost pepper whoppers”, “Need to bring the ghost pepper whopper back instead”, "Where's the ghost pepper whopper!?!? I was looking forward to that!”, and “Where's the ghost whopper at tho???”. Then, I saw a comment from vince beans “ omg I love the Wednesday whopper with the onion rings and they are good to eat”. 

If I were the social media manager, I’d first begin with less quantity and more quality content. 9 posts in 17 days is downright excessive. The teaser post, the official launch, and maybe one or two extras will more than suffice. Then, I’d take the time to respond to the comments on the posts. People were expressing their excitement, asking questions, and leaving comments and Burger King responded to only 4 of the over 300 comments on the initial post. My final decision would be to bring back the darn ghost whooper! The number of comments mentioning it on a totally unrelated post was unreal. 

Through this assignment, I learned the importance of spicing things up. Burger King is an easily forgettable fast food chain, but through its unique ideas is making headlines. It popped up on my Instagram account, which never would’ve happened had it continued to sell just the same old menu.