Brand loyalty is the goal every marketing strategy claims to be working toward. Consistent purchase, emotional attachment, the whole long-term relationship. The campaigns in this article went somewhere more interesting: disloyalty is entertaining, guilt is a mechanic, and an effective way to get someone to try something new is to give them permission to cheat. Nobody has ever queued for a loyalty card. Plenty of people have checked into a motel in secret. No judgement.
Here are seven creative tactics from the Emotion Engine that make disloyalty the whole idea.
- Make Disloyalty the Product Experience
- Imply the Other Side Is Already Cheating
- Give Rival Employees a Backdoor
- Position the Product as the Side Piece
- Protect Fans From Someone Else's Disloyalty
- Use the Rival's Territory Against Them
- Accept Their Loyalty Points and Declare Amnesty
1. Make Disloyalty the Product Experience
Build the physical and emotional infrastructure of an affair — and put your new product inside it.
Motel Burger King — Burger King, Colenso BBDO, 2015
New Zealanders loved the Whopper so much that asking them to try a new TenderCrisp Chicken Burger felt like a genuine act of infidelity. Colenso's answer was to lean into it completely. A real motel was repurposed into Motel Burger King — a venue where devoted Whopper fans could discreetly sample the new chicken burger in private booths, as though conducting an affair. The activation gave the product trial a narrative, a location and a reason to talk about it. Over 850 guests checked in, and Burger King's Facebook engagement rate increased by 587%.
2. Imply the Other Side Is Already Cheating
Use the idea of private disloyalty to make a competitive claim — and let the audience complete the accusation themselves.
McMansions — Burger King, David, 2018
Burger King's flame-grilling point of difference needed to feel like more than a product claim — it needed to feel like an exposed truth. The print campaign showed the backyards of purported McDonald's executives' homes, each featuring a flame grill. The visual joke did the persuasion without a word of product copy: even the people running the competition apparently prefer flame-grilled food at home. Whether or not the houses genuinely belonged to McDonald's executives was beside the point. The insinuation was the message.
3. Give Rival Employees a Backdoor
Turn competitor staff into your most subversive sampling audience — and make the act of trying your product feel illicit enough to travel.
The Secret Backdoors — KFC, PS21, 2021
KFC Spain needed to cut through a fiercely competitive chicken category for the launch of its 'La Infame' sandwich. Rather than targeting consumers directly, the campaign invited employees of rival fast-food chains to try the sandwich through designated 'backdoors' — covert routes that framed the visit as sneaking around behind their employers' backs. The sampling mechanic and the campaign concept were the same thing. Getting rivals' own staff to defect, even temporarily, turned an ordinary product trial into a mischievous, PR-worthy act of betrayal.
Roast for Rivals (7-Eleven, Dentsu Creative New York, 2024) ran ads targeting rival coffee shop baristas during their early-morning commutes, offering them free 7-Eleven coffee before their own stores opened. Employees arriving at work in a competitor's uniform, carrying a 7-Eleven cup, became walking proof that 7-Eleven serves great coffee at hours nobody else does. The best endorsement isn't a paid ambassador. It's someone who wasn't supposed to say yes.
