Ideas Creative America / Fernando Machado

We invited some top execs in the business to tell us their favorite creative ideas of 2018. We're calling the series "Ideas That Worked." They were allowed to pick one idea from their own company, and one idea from outside their company. We'll be running a series of articles featuring their answers. See the first four sets of responses below, and follow the full series of articles here.

Fernando Machado Chief marketing officer, Burger King Our idea that worked: "Whopper Detour" "Whopper Detour" was one of my favorite Burger King ideas this year. It took us about a year to make this FCB New York idea. Why? Because we had to code our mobile app with mobile order/payment and have the app work well consistently with geofencing. We had to geofence all our restaurants in U.S. (more than 7,000) and all McDonald's restaurants in U.S. (more than 14,000). It was a lot of work, but it paid off big time. We are investing a lot to improve guest service at Burger King. Technology has a key role in that. Mobile payment is not necessarily new to people. Nor is geofencing. The beauty of this campaign comes from a big, bold, daring, almost crazy creative idea. The PR headline was very clear: "You will be able to order a Whopper for 1 penny at McDonald's." Wait, what? That's kind of a mindf**k. A Whopper at McDonald's? Well … that's the type of idea we know works for Burger King.

By inviting people to drive to our main competitor to get a crazy discount, we triggered the highest traffic increase to our restaurants since the middle of 2015. Not only that, this direct, e-commerce, PR and integrated campaign propelled our BK App to become the No. 1 app in the Apple Store and Google Play Store (from a starting position around No. 400-and-something!). We got more than 1.5 million people to download the BK App in the U.S. in less than 72 hours. We had more than half a million redemptions of our promo (more than 40 times our previous record for a digital coupon promo). And perhaps most important, we had people seeing Burger King as a modern, savvy and interesting brand. Another idea that worked: Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad The best work of the year? I am pretty confident you will get the same answer from most people you ask. Nike's Colin Kaepernick ad was the most relevant and powerful ad of 2018. This year, there were lots of truly strong campaigns, such as P&G's "It's a Tide Ad" and the "FCK" print from KFC, among others. But Nike hit a home run.

This was an execution completely linked to Nike's classic "Just Do It" positioning. It is an outstanding example that shows that big ideas can evolve, continue to be modern, and trigger amazing creative. In fact, the brand context helps the ad be that much more powerful. The timing was also absolutely key. It was like a lightning struck you when you saw the print or out-of-home for the first time. The boldness of the client is also something that deserves a lot of credit. Most clients I know would have passed on the idea. Nike didn't. Fortune favors the brave. Finally, the results were out of this world. Nike's share price reached an all-time high, sales increased more than 30 percent during the campaign period, $43 million in earned media during the first 24 hours, etc., etc., etc. I could keep going.