The OKRP Singers in the agency’s 2022 “Positive Vibes” holiday video.
OKRP’s recent success can be summed up with a couple of phrases that are hard to miss while watching TV or scrolling through social media—“You Rule” and “Whopper, Whopper, Whopper, Whopper.”
The Chicago-based agency won Burger King in April 2022 with an all-hands-on-deck approach. Nearly every one of the 110 people on staff worked on the pitch at some point, the agency's executives said.
“We went for it with everything we had,” said Tom O’Keefe, founder and CEO. During the pitch process, he recalled, a phrase helped solidify OKRP’s thinking: “We are not not going to win this.”
And win it did. OKRP’s creative work on Burger King began airing in October. The campaign modernizes the chain’s “Have It Your Way” ethos with a vibe that appreciates and celebrates the consumers it’s eager to win over and bring back.
The agency might have seemed like a dark horse going into the review, but it came to the pitch with a wealth of category knowledge. The shop's blend of creative expertise and sales-driving messages helped it win the account, said Tom Curtis, president of Burger King U.S. and Canada. Plenty of Burger King’s previous campaigns attracted industry accolades but weren’t doing enough to boost sales. Wendy’s took the No. 2 throne from Burger King in 2020.
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“I think we’ve done some things in past years that could be described as interesting but I don’t think they inspired love for the brand necessarily, even though they gathered eyeballs, they gathered attention and even sometimes won awards,” said Curtis. “OKRP and our creative team have done a nice job of balancing a need to reposition the brand and lift the brand but at the same time pay attention to the need to drive sales.”
Winning Burger King reflected the work OKRP has done with clients in retail, food, tourism and other categories.
“It is the culmination of what we’ve been as an agency for 10 years,” said Nick Paul, founder and president, “making sure that the work is going to work for the clients and consumers and not just for the industry itself.”
Burger King is now its biggest client, followed by others including the Illinois Tourism Board and Ferrara Candy. OKRP projected 2022 revenue of $25.3 million, up from $22 million in 2021.
OKRP, which launched as O'Keefe Reinhard & Paul in March 2013 and was Ad Age's Small Agency of the Year in 2015, prides itself on doing work that drives business results. “In everything we do there has always been this retail sensibility,” said O’Keefe. “We put the soul in the sale is what we’ve always been about.”
That positioning is now being solidified under Matt McNulty and Ben Pfutzenreuter, group creative directors who joined last year from Leo Burnett who are part of the roughly 15% to 20% of the agency staff dedicated to Burger King. Kevin Lilly, head of strategy, also from Leo Burnett, was another key 2022 hire.
Burger King wasn’t OKRP's only win in 2022. Others included projects for Procter & Gamble and an assignment from Alibaba to launch AliExpress in the U.S.
Its campaign for the Illinois Tourism Board features “Glee” star and Illinois native Jane Lynch as an energetic tour guide at destinations across the Prairie State.
OKRP also helped launch Putney, a Black-owned production and content studio majority owned and led by Elena Robinson, OKRP’s head of production and CEO of Putney, and Aubrey Walker, chief creative officer of Putney, who was executive creative director of OKRP. When it comes to talent, the studio prioritizes working with people of color. Its work has included the launch of The Net, a mental health effort featuring the WNBA’s Chicago Sky.
During her time playing for the WNBA's Chicago Sky, Azurá Stevens helped promote The Net, a mental health initiative.
Burger King’s Curtis was introduced to some of OKRP’s leaders months before Burger King took its account out for review. “Those guys had a passion for this business,” Curtis recalled. “You can see it in even when we’d be riffing about it and they weren’t our agency partners.”
When OKRP pitched it turned to the Gen Z research it was already doing, said Paul. Looking at Gen Z’s fast food preferences led the agency to the idea that the audience felt undervalued. OKRP then leaned into making Burger King’s diner the royalty in the relationship, not the brand.
OKRP’s Burger King work started off more traditionally, with jingle-filled commercials that emphasized the brand and some value deals. The campaign quickly took on a life of its own, with phrases finding their way into everything from a Spotify playlist to duet options on TikTok. There’s even a Wikipedia entry for Whopper Whopper (song).
Curtis confessed he needed convincing about the potential for one of the campaign’s key spots.
“I was like, really, you’re just going to say ‘Whopper Whopper Whopper’ four times in a row?” said Curtis. “And they explained it and they basically had to tag team me with our creative team to convince me that that would actually resonate.”
Now, Curtis said he's pleased whenever he sees videos of people reciting the earworm or wearing crowns and saying “You Rule.”
“It’s great to see the cultural relevance that we have right now based on that work. It really was breakthrough,” said Curtis.
Burger King’s sales growth at long-standing U.S. restaurants continues to lag market leaders McDonald’s and Wendy’s, but the chain is showing signs of improvement in the months since OKRP’s work debuted. Burger King’s fourth-quarter U.S. same-store sales rose 5%. A year earlier, such sales rose just 1.8%.
“I don’t feel like they’re our marketing agency, it’s like they’re our business agency. They’re really involved holistically in the business, and I’ve found that to be a pleasant surprise,” said Curtis.
Now, OKRP’s Whiskey & Bananas production team has an almost always-on approach to building on that “You Rule” messaging, handling projects for Burger King every other week or even more often, said Robinson. “I think they said that we were one of the only agencies that even brought forth this notion of how could we operationalize … production for them.”
Along with Burger King and other wins, OKRP lost some business in 2022. It no longer works with Chili’s, which recently began running TV ads for the first time in three years. And OKRP declined to participate in the review for the Illinois Lottery after serving as its agency of record—though it will still partner with the client on projects.
Ace Hardware, which has worked with OKRP for almost nine years, has seen its approach pay off.
“I think in today’s market it’s critically important that an agency is equally obsessed with effective creative and the business results that come with the intention of the campaign—and that’s OKRP,” said Kim Lefko, chief marketing officer of Ace Hardware.
After Ace’s team speaks with OKRP about an idea, said Lefko, “they come back with fully thought-out, extremely intentional, fully integrated business solutions that aren’t just a sexy commercial.”
A holiday season video featured Ace staffers playing “Carol of the Bells” using products such as wrenches, drills and plenty of Yeti mugs and coolers as instruments. TikTok content with the #AceHoliDIY tag has been viewed 27.2 million times.
Lefko said her brand’s “high-touch partnership” with OKRP hasn’t changed since the agency took on a new, king-sized client. “They haven’t skipped a beat,” she said. “Their level of care and attention to detail has been there throughout.”
