Burger King has enlisted Cornell Haynes, Larissa Machado and Chase Hudson to help tell people about its shift away from artificial ingredients.
Don’t know who those three are? Maybe this will help: Haynes is Nelly, Machado is Anitta and Hudson is LilHuddy.
The trio of musicians are putting their real names behind what Burger King calls “Keep It Real Meals,” a promotion designed to highlight the company’s banning of 120 artificial ingredients in its menu. The meals will be available for a limited time starting on Sunday.
“It’s really part of our long-term commitment to real food and real ingredients,” Burger King North America Chief Marketing Officer Ellie Doty said in an interview. “It’s a pretty significant promotion to support awareness with our Keep it Real Meals and three celebrity partnerships.”
The Cornell Haynes Jr. Meal features a Whopper with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, mayo and ketchup along with small fries and a small Sprite.
The Larissa Machado Meal features an Impossible Whopper with lettuce, tomato, pickles, ketchup and mustard along with fries and a Sprite.
The Chase Hudson Meal includes a Spicy Ch’King with cheese, four-piece mozzarella sticks and a 16-ounce chocolate shake.
Each of the three stars chose their own meals. Hudson “He and his friends went and ate everything on the Burger King menu to put together the right custom meal,” Doty said. “It’s a unique, remarkable experience.”
The meal follows a series of promotions at Burger King rival McDonald’s that began with the Travis Scott Meal last year, followed by one with J Balvin and this year with BTS and most recently Saweetie. That promotion helped McDonald’s sales recover quickly from the pandemic, yielding the company considerable social media credibility in the process.
Burger King hasn’t named meals for celebrities before. The company plans to push the meals on national television and across digital marketing, merchandising and its public relations efforts.
Doty said that the company didn’t have a problem convincing the stars to use their real names. “There is definitely a desire, a hunger for authenticity and realness,” she said. “All three of them were happy to do it.”
The meals do double duty for Burger King because customers who order them can get them for $6 if they sign up for the chain’s Royal Perks loyalty program. That makes the campaign Burger King’s first in which it markets the program.
The meals also highlight Burger King’s real ingredients strategy, which the company has been marketing in recent years—such as with its famous “Moldy Whopper” campaign last year. The company says it has now banned 120 ingredients. Its pickles feature no preservatives and are seasoned with real dill. It uses real mayonnaise and its ranch has no artificial flavors or colors.
That has taken some effort, Doty said. “We did have to source new ingredients for the products,” she said. “We did some fairly extensive testing for our guests to make sure they are the same or better than they’ve ever been.”
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