Retro Ad of the Week: Burger King is NOT a Whopper of an Ad

The summer of nostalgia continues! For this week's ad, we decided to check out Burger King's 1997 commercial for "Have it Your Way," a campaign we are all very familiar with today. 

Fresh off the high of Blockbuster's success in capturing our brains for their ad from the 90's, we had high hopes for this retro 90's ad, backed by smooth R&B tunes and featuring the brightly colored vests, flannel sweaters and track jackets of the 90's. 

So we went to the measurement!

We sent our Brainiac Panel a reel of 90's ads to review, excited to see how Burger King could capture their brains from an ad dating all the way back to 1997.

The ad started out on a strong note, with immersion scores peaking at a score of 74, indicating the neurochemical mix present in our audience that indicates higher recall and increased future action. (How do we know? Immersion measured the whole thing from the smartwatch they were already wearing.)

But the novelty wore off quickly and only 0:09 seconds into the ad, that immersion score dropped below the industry norm all the way down to a measly 15 - indicating our audience's brains were checked out.

And although we loved the hot jams in the background? We know now that music is not a huge driver of immersion and not worth spending the extra money to bank on that helping increase your scores. 

The start of the ad was fun and consumers seemed interested to see where it was going. But without a narrative driving the action of this ad - consumers brains tuned out to the montage of people eating burgers, people making burgers and the weird zoom-in-and-out on the burgers on the grill. 

Overall - this ad averaged only 26 out of 100, which is worse than 75% of the content we measure on Immersion like this.

And to add insult to injury - 100% of the audience was indifferent overall about the content. 

You can watch the ad and see the full measurement HERE.  

Montages often fail to keep consumers immersed - leading to sharp decreases in their scores and less potential for future action. That's not to say all montages are bad! Sometimes the brain does need a break. But a strong narrative weaving the product into the resolution is the best way to drive (and keep!) immersion in your audience. 

And this is IMPORTANT as we know that a 5 point increase in your Immersion score will lead to a 10% increase in sales. 

Curious how Immersion neuroscience can tell us so much about our audience so quickly?

We have a treat for you! Get a free download of the "Agile Neuroscience" chapter from the book Influencing Shopper Decisions.

Here you will learn not only why neuroscience is helpful to center you consumer in your market research - but also why Immersion is immensely more affordable, scalable and accurate than neuromarketing trends of the past. 

Ready to give Immersion a try?