Burger King launches a plant-based Whopper campaign that confuses meat-lovers

Burger King debuts a brand new campaign for its plant-based Whopper, but it left meat-lovers puzzled. The company’s ad was created by DAVID Madrid, an advertising agency based in Madrid, Spain.

Through the new ads, Burger King just proved it is continuously strengthening its commitment to offering “meatless” food alternatives. The campaign is showing the visual similarities of the real meat and its plant-based counterpart, and this confused many meat-lovers because the images all look like meats.

As mentioned on The Drum, DAVID Madrid presented close-up photos of “meat,” but when inspected carefully, one will realize they are actually vegetables. The agency took snaps of beetroot, red pepper, and radicchio, and people easily mistook them for meat. This is why the posters also include the tagline that reads, “Sorry for the confusion, meat lovers.”

“Many times, guests can’t tell the difference between the traditional Whopper and the plant-based Whopper so, we challenged a food photographer and a food stylist to shoot some vegetables in a way that would make them look like meat,” DAVID Madrid’s executive creative director, André Toledo, said in a statement. “The idea was to create ads that would make people ask themselves, ‘Wait, is this meat or is this a plant?”

Apparently, Burger King is trying to show customers how closely plants can resemble meat and, in this case, the beef patties. Through its new campaign, the fast-food chain is also inviting customers to try the iconic Whopper’s plant-based version because there is really very little difference.

The aim of the ads is to break the people’s misconception that just because they are plant-based, they are not as delicious. Many meat-lovers think they lack flavor, but this is not true at all as the Burger King “meatless” Whopper offers the same taste as regular flame-grilled Whopper.

“At Burger King, our plant-based products often feel, taste, and look like real meat; yet many guests are skeptical,” Burger King’s head of global brand marketing, Iwo Zakowski, said. “We wanted to bring a visually powerful message that makes you reconsider that not everything in life is what it seems to be and at Burger King, there is always something on the menu for everyone.”

Finally, Marketing Communication News mentioned that the new Burger King plant-based campaign is also set to be rolled out in other countries, including Germany, Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico, and others.