David Miami on Burger King, humour and getting people talking

To coincide with Cannes Lions, this week on CR we’re focusing on the ad industry. Here, Tony Kalathara and Juan Javier Peña at Miami agency David discuss their Grand Prix-winning work for Burger King and the key to a good client-agency relationship

Last year was a triumphant one for David Miami. The agency took home 26 Cannes Lions, including two Grand Prix – one for its ingenious Google Home of the Whopper ad, which triggered Google Home devices to read out a Wikipedia entry on the Burger King Whopper, and another for a set of print ads that showed real Burger King restaurants on fire alongside the tagline ‘Flame Grilled since 1954’.

In the 12 months since, David Miami has continued to put out some clever, subversive and witty campaigns for the global fast food chain. It used burgers to explain net neutrality in a film that was name checked in Congress, called out our reluctance to step in and help others in a thought-provoking ad about bullying, and took aim at McDonald’s with McMansion: a print campaign that used images of barbecues in the gardens of McDonald’s executives’ former homes to extol the virtues of flame grilling.