The King couldn't improve the Kingdom despite pop-icon status.

This week Burger King announced they would be replacing Miami’s Crispin Porter + Bogusky with agency McGarryBowen after a two month agency review process.

The change is not a surprising corporate reaction considering Burger King has consistently lost market share to McDonalds despite having a new revived "King" mascot that reached pop icon status and ads that got people talking about the brand.

However that only meant more people would talk more often about how they disliked the product!

The ads... no matter how creative, catchy or even creepy could not overcome the inconsistencies of Burger King's customer service, food and store locations.

I've commented on Crispin before and I love their work. Unfortunately they keep getting bad clients that do not take reviving the brand to the full extreme they really need to for success.

Following the success of the Mini Cooper campaign, the Mini being a quality product, CP+B landed a string of sub-par brands (Burger King, Miller Lite & Microsoft) wanting to throw money at advertising without improving their products.

With each campaign Crispin was able to break through clutter and make the ad campaigns (and the product) a topic of conversation.

With each campaign the consumer conversation usually focused on a preference for another brand while enjoying the pop culture reference the campaigns created.

Like Crispin a few times over and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners learned with Sprint McGarryBowen will likely learn that Burger King is not a Verizon Droid or Disney quality product.

 

 

 

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