#BKMenuCourt Trick Shot Challenge – Burger King & NBA2K

In March 2021 Burger King in Spain sponsored the latest release of the official NBA game – NBA2K21 – and activated through an in-game campaign called #TheMenu Court: a customised Burger King menu on the virtual court floor which challenged players to win free items by making shots from the floor positions of each menu item.

Territory: Spain

Agency: David (Madrid), DeSeif & Visual Concepts

Objectives

The aim of this initiative, which followed in the footsteps of Burger King’s previous activation with EA Sports FIFA and Stevenage FC, was to engage younger sports fans and gamers by tapping in to the long-term rising consumer interest in sports gaming and streaming and the shorter term acceleration of this trend driven by the pandemic lockdowns.

The brief was to target the gamer cohort through an immersive, competitive virtual sports-linked experience which linked back to real-world rewards, to drive engagement, social buzz and deliveries.

While in-game ad placements are growing increasingly common in sports gaming franchises, one key challenge was to brand appeal to a young demographic which is typically ad-averse and also tends not to like game-time being interrupted by marketing.

Activation

Based around the idea of creating an in-game basketball court players can actually eat, the initiative aimed to engage and incentivise NBA 2K21 players to order Burger King with the lure of free food won by completing tough shots in the game.

The creative agency David (Madrid) linked up with gaming developer Visual Concepts, publisher 2K Sports and production company DeSeif and the joint team used the in-game editing tools to place a set of Burger King menu items on the virtual court (called a menu item marker).

Then the campaign challenged players to shoot from that point in order to win that item for free in their next order by simply posting a video of the shot to Twitter tagging Burger King and NBA2K with the hashtag #BKMenuCourt to redeem the real-world equivalent of the product.

The tougher the shot, the bigger the menu item reward was.

To participate in the activation, basketball-loving burger eaters needed to download MyLeague Mode (PS4) or MyNBA Mode (PS5) and search for ‘BK_TheMenuCourt’ to download the specially branded arena.

The promotion launched on 25 March 2021 and was promoting through an integrated campaign running primarily on Twitch, Twitter and YouTube with PR support.

A supporting promotional strand saw Burger King harness three of Spain’s biggest gamers – RobertPG (450,200 Twitch followers and 5.33m on YouTube), Papi Gavi (573,800 Twitch followers and 1.22m on YouTube) and Vituber (142,800 Twitch followers and 845,000 on YouTube) – who each streamed their own attempts at the challenge on Twitch and YouTube.

The team at the creative agency David included Global CCO & Partner Pancho Cassis, Global COO Sylvia Panico, Executive Creative Directors André Toledo and Saulo Rocha, Creative Director Fred Bosch, Copywriter Jaime Ludeña, Art Director Francesc Enrich, Group Account Directors Lucila Mengide and Stefane Rosa, Account Supervisor Adriana Gonzalez, Strategic Mananger Patricia Urgoiti, Producer Sebastian Arce, Head of Social Alex Sánchez and Global PR Director Sandra Azedo.

At production company DeSeif the group working on the project included Global Chief Marketing Officer Fernando Machado, Global Brand Marketing Diego Suarez, CMO RBI Iberia Bianca Shen, Marketing Director Beatriz Faustino, Head of Brand Marketing Yvette Altet, Head of Digital Media & PR Borja Moya, plus Brand and Communication Manager María Lafuente.
 

Outcome

The game attracted 3,000 participants, with 2,773 players taking part in a promotional challenge which generated more than 4.9m impressions on social media. While 99% of those aware of the campaign reacting positively to the activation.