Cannes Lions Winner 2018 – Whopper No Show

This Cannes Lion–winning campaign for Whopper, created by Publicis, was built around a simple but astonishing truth: at the time, there was only one Burger King in Romania — and it was located inside the airport. If you wanted to eat a Whopper, you literally had to leave the country.

Crazy, but true.

That single insight became the engine for an ingenious idea. Faced with the absurd reality that a plane ticket was the only way to access a Whopper, the creatives at Publicis turned logistical inconvenience into the campaign’s central hook. What might have been a limitation became the story — using humour, irony, and cultural observation to highlight just how far people would go for the iconic burger.

The campaign leaned fully into the madness of the situation, embracing the scale of the commitment required to satisfy a craving, and in doing so delivered a piece of branded storytelling that felt both hilarious and unmistakably real. Smart, culturally sharp, and rooted in a genuine insight, the work cut through precisely because it didn’t exaggerate — it simply told the truth.

The result was a standout, award-winning campaign that exemplified how a single, unexpected fact can fuel a globally resonant creative idea when treated with confidence and wit.