It's Almost Halloween. Will You Take 'The Call' From Burger King?
It's spooky season, and brands have answered the call to give consumers a good scare.
Timed to Halloween, Burger King launched "The Call," a 60-second whopper of a tale featuring a young woman, watching TV alone in the dark, who receives an unsettling call.
"It's back. It's coming for you," says a voice like Ghostface. With no time to dilly-dally, she races to the fridge for her emergency milk and flees the premises.
Soon after, her car dies, the windows lock, a crow screeches and that unknown caller infiltrates her dashboard radio "You can't run from the heat," it says. We see a Ghost Pepper Whopper and Ghost Pepper Chicken Fries in the back seat. Good thing she grabbed that milk.
The spot, developed by Dentsu Creative, production company Wild Gift Content and director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, ends with the woman casually live-streaming her friends post-meal, bragging that she was able to handle the spice.
The kicker: Her voice turns demonic as she adds, "It's coming for you, too."
The ad is running online and in movie theaters.
For more scary antics, consumers can answer a customized call by signing up at TheCall.BK.com.
"The Call" was shot on the location used to film Jeepers Creepers, and the car appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Other fun facts: A spooky version of the "Whopper Whopper" jingle plays when food appears. On the livestream, our heroine's profile picture morphs into a snap of Ghost Pepper Chicken Fries—with 1,954 viewers, a nod to BK's founding in 1954.
"Friday the 13th is sacred ground for horror buffs, of which we have many within our team," says Bridget Jewell, ECD of Dentsu Creative Social Creative Lab.
"When concepting ideas for the return of the Ghost Pepper Whopper, we wanted to embody the sticky scream queen with our own twist. The original horror camp of Scream and the ever-popular series American Horror Story were two inkwells we tapped to balance the spooky and spice."
