How Burger King’s stealth ad foiled McDonald’s

por Maud Largeaud , AdForum

Last week’s Webby awards give us a good excuse to take a look at this neat hack from last September. When Burger King called McDonald’s and asked if it could place an ad in the rival brand’s in-store movie magazine, the answer was pretty much what you’d expect. But Burger King and its agency Grabarz & Partners weren’t going to leave it at that. For the launch of a popular horror film featuring a fiendish clown, the agency placed an advertorial about the movie in the McDonald’s mag. The twist was that, thanks to augmented reality, waving your phone over the article turned it into an ad for McDonald’s, complete with an exhortation to “Escape the clown!” But wait, there’s more. The Burger King ad also offered money off a Whopper based on how far customers dashed from McDonald’s to claim their prize at the competing fast food giant. A worthy winner of the Webby AR category.