Burger King Uses a Traffic Jam To Become #1 App in Mexico, Absolute Genius!

I hate all of those Grab delivery drivers clogging the roads in South East Asia. It doesn’t seem to matter where you go; they are in the way. 

Perilously zig-zagging through the traffic as if their grandfathers built the roads or worse parking where they darn-well like to pick up or drop off food. Just last night I counted almost 40 bikes outside of my local mall taking up a whole lane of road and causing traffic-misery, and at least a twenty-minute delay, for those of us (me) that just wanted to travel another 500 metres to get home.

For others though the glass is definitely half full. In down town Mexico City the jams are legendary.  Unfortunate motorists can be stuck for hours sometimes in queues that go nowhere fast. Of course, hunger sets in but, what to do?  

Burger King, the American fast-food retailer, has come to the rescue of the starved motorist by offering deliveries to your car as you sit in traffic. By using real time data to locate the motorist Burger King can deliver food to motorists whilst on the move. They call it the traffic Jam Whopper and it operates in areas well known for the traffic congestion.  

The company uses push messages to individual phones inviting users of the app to order and placed changeable video ‘billboard’ adverts that displayed the time the motorist would be stuck in traffic along with the time they could expect to have their meal-on-two wheels delivered, they even went as far as personalised updates on the billboards to the motorist on the progress of their order. The app even allowed customers to use voice commands to order. Freaking Genius!

The delivery zones change along with the congestion but the order is always placed to an outlet within three kilometres of the stuck driver. Burger King claim that this is the first time that anyone has been able to pull this off to a moving customer and claim that delivery orders increased by 63% in one week, and, become the number one app in the country.

Would you use this in our location?  Certainly there have been times when I was in Bangkok or Jakarta or Manila or Delhi where this would have come in useful, what do you think?

Watch the Burger King video here: