burger mcsausage unoriginal smarts

so. This television advertisement introducing the Burger King breakfast sausage biscuit (the one where the creepy king breaks into McDonald’s headquarters to steal the mcmuffin recipe):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF86Rb-uFNE

The execution doesn’t confuse me but the effort makes me pause and scratch my head a little.

But I guess if you have more money then you know what to do with and you see research numbers that show “people consider McDonalds for breakfast and not Burger King” and you already know what McDonalds best breakfast seller is then you spend some of that money saying “hey we have the same thing just in case you didn’t know.”

There are several things I do like about this:

Competitive but not competitive. It’s odd but they are going for the competitor jugular in an interesting way. They state that they are going to offer an unoriginal product (in that they are simply stealing someone else’s ‘good idea’). But. That also implies that it’s not rocket science stuff. That maybe the original McD’s breakfast biscuit just isn’t that “unique.” (clever guys those Crispin fellows – Crispin is burger kings’ agency of record).

No superiority. Simply “hey, if you like us <burger king> and you want exactly what you could get if you stopped at the bastards down the street here you go. We have it for you. We are willing to copy if it makes you happy.” Kind of shows you like your customers and will do whatever it takes to make them happy (even steal I guess).

And then the creepy king. Here is where I give Crispin the highest marks of all.

For years while brilliant the agency has been “one-off” brilliant. One great brilliant idea. Non campaignable. Lose client after one brilliant idea because they didn’t really have a great follow-up.

(Look. The BMW mini campaign the agency built their main reputation on was not a creative messaging brilliance idea it was a tactical brilliance concept … which I give them kudos for just don’t want to oversell their brilliance  … or misidentify it).

Anyway. Back to the creepy king. Alex Bogusky is our generation’s Bill Bernbach. And he has matured (in my humble opinion) to a point where he is truly earning that pedestal. The Burger King creepy king is a great showcase for why I believe it to be so. The young Bogusky would probably have shoved a brand/company mnemonic device sustaining multiple campaigns over time so far up a client’s ass a proctologist would have been envious. But. He (or at least he encouraged his teams) stepped up and said “well, let’s make the best of it and I want to do it my way …. creatively and interestingly and sometimes creepy when we are wrong in the execution but sticking with it and getting it right.” They have made it work. And made it work over time. They have a sustainable mnemonic device (or branding element or whatever you want to call it).

Anyway.

I slam people but I also want to give some credit where credit is due.

Cannot wait to see what the creepy king does next.