Burger King Wants To Trick Meat Lovers Into Trying Plant-Based Food

With the increasing hype about plant-based food, Burger King made a move to promote its meatless menu. The fast-food chain recently came up with an all-new campaign. Burger King tries to convince meat lovers to consider alternate options as it uses optical illusion to represent them. Upon a first glance at the brand’s print and outdoor ads, real meat is depicted. However, if you closely inspect the images, you will see that those images are actually close-up shots of vegetables. Some vegetables that have been used in the campaign include beetroot, red pepper, and radicchio. This global campaign by Burger King is titled “Meat?”.

In these ads, you can be struck by the fact that plants can closely mirror beef. This is what the tagline says: “Sorry for the confusion, meat lovers”. This optical illusion has been somewhat successful in convincing the meat-lovers to try out Burger King’s plant-based Whopper.

Creation Of The Optical Illusion

This optical illusion was created by Creative agency David Madrid. The work will run in markets including Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Germany. A food photographer and stylist was challenged by the creative agency to photograph vegetables in a way that would resemble meat. This is what André Toledo, the executive creative director had to say about it: “The idea was to create ads that would make people ask themselves, ‘Wait, is this meat or is this a plant?’”

“At Burger King, our plant-based products often feel, taste, and look like real meat, yet many guests are skeptical. We wanted to bring a visually powerful message that makes you reconsider that not everything in life is what is seems to be” said Iwo Zakowski, who is the head of global brand marketing at Burger King.

Previous Efforts By Burger King

For promoting its plant-based Whopper Burger King held another campaign last month. In this campaign, the brand chose four common people who share a name with popular celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan. The idea of the campaign was that just like these people could be mistaken for stars, plant-based food could be confused for meat.