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Fast food chains fighting for market share through advertising is nothing new, but the rise of generative AI has opened a new front in the battle.
The conflict first got heated in São Paulo, Brazil, where ChatGPT-generated billboards for Burger King and McDonald’s were placed alongside each other.
McDonald’s kicked off the trend this month by launching an out-of-home campaign sharing the OpenAI chatbot’s answer to the question, “What is the most iconic burger in the world?” The copy detailed why the Big Mac deserves the title, giving a bit of history of the sandwich that dates back to 1967 and how it’s even used by The Economist to measure the purchasing power of world currencies.
Just a few days later, Burger King launched a new ad from agency David São Paulo that asked ChatGPT what burger was the biggest. It answered that the Whopper is the largest in terms of size and amount of ingredients and “is considered a robust and satisfying burger.”
The poster was placed right next to McDonald’s ad. Both use their respective color schemes in the fonts and depict each company’s logo.
Enter the footlong
Subway then entered the fray on June 13 by asking ChatGPT how both burgers compare to the chain’s signature footlong sub. The response was: “In terms of size, both are significantly smaller than a footlong sandwich.”
Unlike Burger King and McDonald’s, the sandwich chain isn’t actually buying ad space in Brazil. Instead, Saatchi & Saatchi London created a digital mockup of the chatbot’s answer for Subway, which the brand shared across social media.
“If there’s going to be a conversation on iconic sandwiches, Subway will of course get involved,” Kirstey Elston, Subway marketing director for the U.K. and Ireland, said in a statement. “What can we say—even ChatGPT knows our footlongs are the biggest and best sandwich out there.”
