Burger King is running an advertising campaign right now that doubles as a free marketing class for anyone who decides to pay attention.

Have you seen it?

The concept is simple: they show one of their burgers on a black background. The burger is first carefully constructed by gloved hands, using instruments and pointers to get the lettuce, tomato, mayo, etc. all in the perfect place.

This final creation is labeled "The Whopper" - Day 01.

From there, things get interesting.

The still shot continues, on a time-lapse, and we see the burger slowly deflate as the day counter climbs up to 02, 03, 04, etc. Things start to look unsavory, and the burger no longer looks appetizing.

Then, the mold appears.

By the final image on day 34, the burger looks like this:

In the background, the whole time, the ad plays the 1950s hit "What a difference a day makes," which has a soulful, romantic feel to it.

The ad leverages contrast, it defies expectations, and it deliberately pokes fun at the typical, polished fast food burger ad. This is because everyone now knows just how FAKE those advertisements are.

And people crave authenticity.

Of course, the advertisement comes with lots of risk. Imagine the fear that most fast food sellers have about selling moldy food. You could imagine them staying up at night, worried about a PR backlash from selling spoiled food.

Burger King takes that, embraces it, and uses it to their advantage. How?

They tap into another understanding that we now have of the fast food market - the preservatives. So, by taking a risk, showing their product go moldy, and defying our expectations...they set us up to trust their ultimate claim. Their burger's contain none of that fake "stuff" that other fast food chains might be serving us.

The question to ask yourself, if you're working on the communications, branding, positioning, and copy for your education product or service, is this:

Where you can deliberately align yourself AGAINST the common narrative?

For a quick, education-related example, consider Flipgrid. They took a look at the polished, professional marketing done by legacy education companies...and smashed it with their Millennial/Gen Z, emoji-filled, social media-driven branding.

They defy the traditional view of a classroom - quiet, compliant, a focus on learning - and replace it with a talkative, free-feeling, focus on fun as a means to learning.

But the most important part is this: if you try Flipgrid, then you realize this difference is built into the product. Otherwise, that attempt at branding and positioning would be quickly identified as inauthentic.

Finally, here's a quick, free offer for you:

Send me the link to your company's website or social media profile. I'll reply with three ways that you could potentially apply this "contrast marketing" approach yourself. This applies to the first five people who write back to me.

Thanks for reading,

Gerard Dawson