At Burger King, we stick to a :15 second commercial media buy on television in the US. But trying to fit all of The Whopper’s fresh ingredients and taste qualifiers in such little time is a big task. So to deliver the full message of The Whopper’s attributes we turned a :15 into a :30 second TV spot by intentionally triggering Google Home to read The Whopper’s Wikipedia entry with the question “Ok Google, what is The Whopper burger?”
At first, Google Home answered and described The Whopper as planned. Then the trolls got the idea to add ingredients like “100% medium sized child” and “cyanide” to the Wikipedia entry. In grand defense of open-source integrity, Wikipedia silenced the trolls and rightfully restored The Whopper definition. Then, three hours after the launch of the ad online, Google blocked our audio from activating Google Homes. With the TVC set to air that night, publications began speculating what would happen next.
Little did Google know we had some extra audio edits hiding up our sleeves. To be very sneaky, a new but nearly indistinguishable version was uploaded online and sent to broadcast, and Google Home was activating again. For safe measure, we uploaded a playlist with more audio versions of the spot the next day. Google Homes kept activating. Google gave up, and a debate ensued around the intrusiveness of voice-activated assistants and the limits of advertising, while successfully putting The Whopper on the tips of billions of tongues.
