The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022–2023
Burger King glitches its own app, ads and menu to court gamers
Agency DAVID gave Burger King deliberate game-style glitches across app, media and menu, turning the bug gamers live with into entertainment.
Burger King
What it had to solve
Burger King wanted to engage the gamer community in an innovative way, and DAVID started from a single insight drawn from gamers' everyday lives. Rather than interrupt play with a polished ad, the brand could speak the language of a flaw every gamer knows.
How it works
Burger King wanted to engage the gamer community in an innovative way, and agency DAVID found its opening in something players meet every session: glitches. Where most brands would present a flawless front, the campaign treated the game bug as a shared language between the brand and its audience.
The execution was to create glitches for things that were working perfectly. The Burger King app glitched, its media placements glitched, and even the Burger King menu joined in, so the flaw of video games became entertainment that was also functional and relevant. Each activation invited the gamer into the joke across a different brand touchpoint.
D&AD filed the campaign in its awards archive under Experiential: Activation & Participation, where it stands as an example of turning a technical flaw into an engagement idea rather than a problem to hide.
Why it lands
- It borrows the audience's own world: the glitch is a daily reality for gamers, so the campaign needed no explanation.
- Deliberately breaking things that work — the app, the media, the menu — made each touchpoint a moment of play instead of an interruption.
- The idea was portable across every channel the brand owned, turning one insight into a family of activations.
- Making the bug fun reframed a flaw as an asset, the opposite of the perfectionism most advertising reaches for.
What it did
The campaign gave gamers a reason to play with the brand across its app, media and menu rather than be talked at, and D&AD archived the work under Experiential: Activation & Participation.
What you can take
A flaw your audience already lives with can become the hook: instead of presenting a perfect brand, let the brand glitch like the player's world and make the joke theirs.
Since then
Burger Glitch ran as a Brazilian campaign in 2022 and was recognised by international juries, with the work entering the D&AD annual for 2023. Its archive entry remains a reference for engaging gaming communities through a mechanic taken from their own experience rather than a conventional ad message.
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