What Was the Whopper Detour?
For nine days in 2018, Burger King sold Whoppers for one cent, but only if you were standing at a McDonald’s. It turned a competitor’s real estate into its own advertising, and the real prize was not the burgers.
Most promotions try to get you into the store. This one required you to be standing at the competitor’s store first, which is the part that made it famous.
How it worked
The mechanic was simple and slightly absurd.
Burger King placed a digital boundary 600 feet around McDonald’s restaurants nationwide. Open the Burger King app while inside that boundary and the offer activated: one Whopper, one cent.
You could not redeem it there, obviously. Once unlocked, the app switched to navigation and directed you to the nearest Burger King, where the order was waiting. So the sequence was: drive to McDonald’s, take out your phone, then drive away from McDonald’s.
The offer was limited to one per customer over the run of the campaign, and it was app only, which matters for the reason below.
The numbers
| Result | Figure |
|---|---|
| Campaign length | Nine days, December 4 to 12, 2018 |
| Geofence radius | 600 feet around McDonald’s locations |
| App downloads in the first days | More than 1 million |
| Total downloads | Around 1.5 million |
| App Store position | Most downloaded app in the United States for several consecutive days |
| Category position | Most downloaded fast food app among its direct competitors |
Reaching number one on the App Store outright, above every social, game and utility app in the country, is not something a burger promotion normally does.
The point was never the Whoppers
This is what most retellings miss.
A one cent Whopper loses money on every order. Selling a few hundred thousand of them is a cost, not a win. What Burger King was actually buying was app installs.
An installed app is a permanent, direct line to a customer. It sends notifications for free, it carries offers that never touch the counter menu, it collects order history, and it removes the delivery platforms and advertising networks that sit between a chain and its customers and take a cut.
Measured that way, roughly 1.5 million installs for the cost of a nine day discount is extremely cheap. Buying that many app downloads through ordinary advertising would have cost far more and produced less loyal users, because these ones arrived amused rather than interrupted.
Burger King has leaned on app exclusive pricing ever since, which is why app prices sit below counter prices on most items. The current deals are listed on the Burger King menu.
The awards, and why they matter
At Cannes Lions 2019 the campaign, created by FCB New York, won the Direct Grand Prix and the Titanium Grand Prix. It was also named Campaign of the Year at the Mobile Marketer Awards.
The Titanium category is the relevant one. It is not awarded for the best advertisement but for work that breaks the existing model of what advertising is. A promotion that uses a rival’s physical footprint as its trigger, delivered entirely through a phone, qualified on that basis.
Could it be done again?
Technically yes, and it has been imitated. Practically the effect has worn off.
The campaign worked in 2018 because geofencing was novel enough to be surprising and because app install was still a meaningful ask. Both are now routine. Every major chain runs location aware offers and most customers already have the apps installed, so the same stunt would produce a fraction of the reaction.
What has lasted is the underlying idea, which Burger King has kept using: build the promotion around the app rather than the counter, and make the mechanic itself the story so that the press coverage does the advertising. That is the same logic behind the Subservient Chicken fourteen years earlier, covered in What was the Subservient Chicken.
Related Questions
What was the Whopper Detour?
A Burger King promotion that ran from December 4 to 12, 2018. The chain placed a 600 foot geofence around McDonald’s locations across the United States, and opening the Burger King app inside one of those zones unlocked a Whopper for one cent. The app then navigated you to the nearest Burger King to collect it.
How did the Whopper Detour work?
You had to be physically within 600 feet of a McDonald’s for the offer to activate in the Burger King app. Once unlocked, the app switched to navigation and directed you to the nearest Burger King, where the one cent Whopper could be collected. It was app only and limited to one per customer across the campaign.
Why did Burger King use McDonald’s locations?
Because it could not buy them. McDonald’s spent decades acquiring high traffic corner sites, so Burger King turned those locations into advertising triggers instead of trying to compete for the property. The geofence sat in software rather than on McDonald’s land, so there was nothing the competitor could do about it.
How successful was the Whopper Detour?
It drove more than a million app downloads within days and around 1.5 million in total, and made the Burger King app the most downloaded app in the United States for several consecutive days, above every social, game and utility app. It was also the most downloaded fast food app among its direct competitors during the run.
Did Burger King lose money on the one cent Whoppers?
On each burger, yes, but that was not the measure. The campaign was buying app installs, which give a chain a permanent direct line to customers through free notifications and app only offers, without paying delivery platforms or ad networks. Around 1.5 million installs for the cost of a nine day discount is cheap by advertising standards.
What awards did the Whopper Detour win?
At Cannes Lions 2019 it won both the Direct Grand Prix and the Titanium Grand Prix, and it was named Campaign of the Year at the Mobile Marketer Awards. The Titanium award is significant because it recognizes work that breaks the existing model of advertising rather than simply executing it well.
Who created the Whopper Detour?
The agency FCB New York. It is one of a long line of Burger King campaigns built to generate press coverage rather than to be broadcast, a strategy the chain has relied on because it has never been able to outspend McDonald’s on conventional advertising.
More on Burger King
About this guide. USA Food Menu is an independent reference site and is not affiliated with Burger King Corporation, Restaurant Brands International, FCB or McDonald’s Corporation. Campaign dates, mechanics, download figures and awards were checked against marketing industry reporting and award records. The promotion ended in 2018 and is not available. Current prices and calories are on the Burger King menu.
More Restaurant Guides
Who Owns In-N-Out Burger?
Lynsi Snyder, the granddaughter of founders Harry and Esther Snyder. She is the company’s president and has been its sole owner since 2017. In-N-Out has never…
Who Owns Five Guys?
The Murrell family. Jerry and Janie Murrell started Five Guys with their sons in 1986, and the family still owns and runs it. It is a private company that grows…
Who Owns Chili’s?
Brinker International, a Dallas based public company that also owns Maggiano’s Little Italy. Chili’s started as a single burger joint in Dallas in 1975 and has…