How Burger King’s AI-generated Whoppers reflect the brand’s heritage

In 1974, Burger King rolled out its iconic “Have it your way” slogan with a jingle that assured consumers, “Special orders don’t upset us, all we ask is that you just allow us to serve it your way!” Fifty years on, the fast-food chain is taking its promise of customized burger orders to the next level with a contest that’s fueled by generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Burger King on Feb. 5 launched the Million Dollar Whopper Contest, letting consumers create their very own Whopper for a likelihood at a $1 million prize and the opportunity for 3 entrants to have their personal tackle a customized burger sold for a limited time. After inputting as much as eight ingredients in the BK App or via a microsite, Burger King uses generative AI to bring the burger — and a customized jingle — to life, giving consumers a picture and video that may be shared across social.

“The Million Dollar Whopper Contest leans into customization in ways we never have, and knowing that only three guests can have the opportunity to see their Whopper innovations in restaurants, we desired to explore how we could bring every body’s submission to life,” Burger King CMO Pat O’Toole said in emailed comments. 

“That’s where AI got here in – we all know that AI (and specifically generative AI) might be continuing to evolve the way that we create, engage, and optimize different marketing content. That said, we desired to make sure that we entered the space in an authentic way that had roots in our brand heritage,” the executive added.

The contest ties into insights about the brand, where nearly half of guests customize their Whoppers not directly, and its marketing priorities around customization and giving consumers a latest strategy to interact with a Royal Perks loyalty program that helps drive engagement and frequency. The use of generative AI comes as the technology is starting to point out use-cases for marketers after greater than a 12 months of hype.

“We saw an enormous opportunity in using AI to assist deliver a campaign that was authentic to the brand, but in addition allowed our guests to have a seamless and fun experience. AI has played a pivotal role, each in the consumer-facing front, but in addition in how our team assesses and understands the ingredients that guests are entering,” O’Toole said.

Generative AI will not be without its risks and critics. Stories of massive AI investments are only as common as ones about bad results, hallucinations and deep fakes. But Burger King — a brand known for making marketing bets at the vanguard of technology — appears to be as prepared as it will probably be.

“AI is like every emerging technology — powerful, but slightly unpredictable,” O’Toole said. “We’ve been preparing substantially on our side and telling our guests to expect the unexpected.”

Underneath the hood

Created by Media.Monks, the contest’s AI-fueled experience allows users so as to add as much as eight ingredients to their Whopper creations, and other than allergens, inedible items and profanity, the only limit is their imagination. Building an experience that’s scalable, brand-safe and privacy-first provided a challenge for the marketing and promoting services company.

“At Media.Monks, we now have put lots of emphasis into AI knowledge across all the departments,” said Iran Reyes, vp and global head of engineering at the company. “Every product department is knowledgeable about AI — it is not only tech connecting dots, it’s really knowing how the technology works.” 

Generating custom Whoppers with AI required several large language models (LLMs) to be fine-tuned to brand guidelines around what ingredients may very well be included and what they might appear like topping a burger. But the “magic ingredient” is Media.Monks’ use of a dedicated team — not the developers themselves — for quality assurance (QA), Reyes said.

“Our QA team is sort of knowledgeable with AI as well,” the executive said. “The QA team is big, they usually have lots of experience working with LLMs.”

After generating a picture of a Whopper that appears realistic and possible, the next step was working to generate a customized jingle that includes a voice rapping about the ingredients in a way harking back to the brand’s popular “Whopper Whopper” jingle. While the AI-generated images will likely generate the most buzz, the audio is definitely the most complex component of the experience.

“It is sort of a dynamic ad… it’s actually quite complex to match up and connect all the dots,” Reyes said. “We are attending to where hyper personalization is our reality.”