Henry Gómez de Zubi
Zubi won the first Lion in the agency’s history. The winning entry was The Impossible Combofor Burger King, a work partnered by Zubi and DAVID São Paulo that took Silver in the Media category. “We realized it was a real whopper of an idea. The concept was basically to combine people’s favorite hamburger, which is Burger King’s Whopper, with their favorite French fries, which are those at McDonald’s. We decided on this prohibited combo, knowing that these treats can’t normally be combined – but since consumers always talk about how super it would be to combine their favorite hamburger with their favorite French fries, which come from different restaurants, it would be ideal,” said Zubi’s Henry Louis Gomez, VP of Strategic Planning, and seconded by Pablo Miro, VP of Marketing Growth. The idea took off thanks to the food delivery service Rappi, an ally of both restaurants. “We met with Fernando Machado (ex-CMO of Burger King), we presented three ideas and Machado smiled when we were finished, saying ‘You guys made a typical agency presentation – you presented the easy idea first, then the idea you wanted to sell, and third, the one that would never be approved. It gave us a good feedback,’” Gomez recalled. The idea selected to get the project rolling was the second presented. Gomez said that since the brand executives were seen to greatly respect their creative agencies, and as the agency formed part of WPP, they took its advice to work with DAVID to execute the creative idea. “We met with DAVID Sao Paulo and they helped us a lot,” he said. “First we made a presentation to a company based in the U.S., but it didn’t accept the idea. But then DAVID with its contacts in Brazil got the delivery app Rappi to approve the idea.” The sale was quick. “All of us in Miami were pleased to see how the idea was developing,” Gomez said.