We know all too well, that people have even less time and patience for marketing messages and content these days. And the messages that don’t cut through the noise go unnoticed. So brands who find new and engaging ways to win people’s attention are the ones winning their custom. Our Engage Me trend provides an insight into how brands can do this.

The Engage Me trend is all about seeking and optimising consumer attention


It’s been argued that we’ve reached ‘peak attention’. So the amount of information, content and messages we voluntarily and involuntarily subject ourselves too, has reached a point where we can’t feasibly compute any more.

Therefore, brands need to push the boundaries to be heard and think outside the box to break through. Traditional channels won’t always cut it, making the choice of medium a critical aspect to getting cut through to your desired audience.

Burger King got people talking…and Google Home


Burger King caused chaos with seven simple words: “OK Google, what is The Whopper burger?”. Using the phrase in their TV ad, it triggered Google Home assistants and Android phones across the US to let their unknowing owners know exactly what a Whopper is.

The stunt received a lot of backlash, with internet trolls tweaking ingredients on the Burger King Wikipedia page to things like “medium sized child” and “cyanide”. But their unexpected, bold stunt paid off and grabbed the attention of a lot of consumers, resulting in 9.3million global impressions.

A still from Burger King's Whopper campaign

Burger King’s stunt is the verbal/sound equivalent of the Bizarreness Effect, which is the tendency for unusual content to be more memorable than expected content.  Surreptitiously invading consumer’s homes via voice activation, it most definitely reaches the bizarre end of the spectrum but it was engaging.

How can you leverage this?


Find out more about our Engage Me trend and the connection between consumers and behavioural economics in our latest report on the top trends driving consumer behaviour. Download it here.

By Phil Monks

Deputy Creative Director