Beyond beef puns: How competing burger places mutually boosted the other’s brand through provocation
The tendency for burger places to push their own brand forward through daring and funny acts at the expense of competitors had been well-documented. Burger King’s recent stunt of offering $1 Whoopers to people nearby McDonalds restaurants is just one example of how relentless an execution can be when it comes to taking an edge in a burger rivalry. Albeit on a significantly smaller scale, this past Halloween a cozy gourmet burger place at the heart of Sofia — Skaptoburger — dared to mess around with its main competitor — Boom! Burgers — by dressing like it for Halloween.
But was Skaptoburger actually aiming to simply make the other side look bad for a handful of ‘’guess we have a beef’’ puns on their Facebook page? Not quite.
In small markets like the Bulgarian one, there is a prevailing misconception that business competitors are supposed to be hindering each other by all means necessary, especially when it comes to small business. With this campaign Skapto and ourselves wanted to prove that this should not be the case. Instead, apparent business rivals can communicate to one another and this communication can be beneficial to both sides. Because new agers like ourselves repudiate the notion of the zero-sum game. The better way is always an option.
..what matters at the end of the day is that we managed to prove that competitors can reach out to one another actually push their shared category forward.
Below we will break down what we did for Skapto both off and online and how the whole thing rolled out.
For starters, we have re-created their logo and layout with some twists here and there. Next up, the disguising went on offline as Skapto disappeared in order to evoke the booming cow. And finally, one last thing to be mentioned — Boom!Burgers announce their burger of the month on Wednesday. And because fortune favors the bold, guess what day Halloween was that year? All ready.
People were quite openly perplexed from the very start. Some were finding it funny, others were frowning at the audacity (because Boom! was the original burger place in town and they are the true locals indeed, unlike Skapto which carries the old name of a province town south-west of Bulgaria’s capital).
Three hours later Boom! themselves joined the party and we were happy to see that they seemed to not mind the provocation. Their reply was quite funny and slightly peppery, yet all in the good spirit of sustaining the notion of playful competition. Yeah sure, Coca-Cola had a strikingly similar answer to Pepsi’s Halloween stunt some time ago but who cares, right? Boom! are our buddies and buddies roast one another.
Because what matters at the end of the day is that we managed to prove that competitors can reach out to one another actually push their shared category forward. Totally worth it.
Boom! It’s all good.
We still wonder what will be next for Skaptoburger, but we sure do promise to keep you posted.
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