A kingdom seeks magic

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Indeed, impersonating the king is apparently irresistible to some fast-food fans. A plastic king mask, which the company plans to offer at $10 in time for Halloween, was recently listed for sale at $100 on Ebay.

Burger King's marketing blitzkrieg started in 2004, when its ad agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, created a Web site featuring a guy in a chicken suit who responded to typed commands. Within a week of its launch www.subservientchicken.com, which is still active, had 52 million visits that lasted, on average, eight minutes.

"We're really trying to do something different and not just give consumers a straight ad over and over," says Gillian Smith, senior director of media and interactive.

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Burger King has shelled out a total of $730 million on U.S. advertising since 2004, says TNS Media Intelligence, which comes close to 4 percent of U.S. systemwide store sales. (For the June 30 fiscal year the company's revenue, largely from company-owned restaurants, was $2.05 billion.) Klein, the company's sixth marketing chief in a decade, credits the efforts with helping boost annual sales for the average franchise from $940,000 in 2002 to $1.1 million this year.

It's easy for the company to look decent after faring so poorly for so long. The world's second-largest burger purveyor languished from 1998 through 2004, with same-store sales that declined or were flat each year. During that time many of their franchisees struggled because they were overleveraged. In December 2002 private equity partners Texas Pacific Group, Bain Capital Partners and the Goldman Sachs Funds bought Burger King from Diageo Plc. for $1.5 billion.

But clever marketing goes only so far. Burger King's North American same-store sales growth of 3.5 percent in the first half of this year trailed results at McDonald's. Since the owners raised $425 million by selling shares to the public in May at $17, the stock has gone sideways, closing recently at $16.25.

"How do they translate (the advertising) to 'I want to come back to Burger King because of the food and the rest of the experience'? That's the challenge," says Allen Adamson, New York managing director of Landor Associates, a branding firm.

Klein insists the company is getting there. "Everything we do is purposeful," says he. "We're not just setting our hair on fire to attract attention."

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