“What happened?” begins Burger King’s latest ad, which premiered during Sunday night’s Oscars broadcast on ABC. “There was a time when Burger King used to be king.”

The question has been the center of a yearslong, $700 million effort to revamp Burger King’s image after the brand lost its spot as the No. 2 US burger chain in 2020.

Over the last several years, the brand has been updating its restaurant operations, technology, and appearances, as well as adjusting menu items and changing its packaging, Joel Yashinsky, CMO of Burger King US and Canada, told Marketing Brew. It’s also changed some branding elements, like giving its king mascot the pink slip.

“Many people found the king to be creepy,” Yashinsky said. “So we’re firing the king.”

Extensive conversations with customers and franchisees have provided insights on what Burger King needed to change, from axing the mascot to adding boxes to prevent in-bag burger flattening, he said. Last month, Burger King President Tom Curtis, who recently went viral, posted his phone number on social media and asked people to share feedback on the brand. He’s received more than 20,000 calls and text messages to date, Yashinsky said.

The brand is only halfway through its transformation, Curtis recently told the Wall Street Journal, but there are signs that things are moving in the right direction. During a presentation to investors in February, he said that Burger King ranked No. 6 out of 12 “in overall satisfaction among top US QSR brands” in 2025, per Circana, up from 2020 when the brand ranked 10th.

Yashinsky said Burger King’s evolution will continue to be guided by customer feedback until satisfaction rates are even higher.

“This is not a marketing campaign,” Yashinsky told us. “It’s a brand reset.”

Continue reading here.—KH

Powerade has been a sponsor of the NCAA for nearly every year since 2010. This year, though, that sponsorship, including the designation as the official sports drink of March Madness, is going to a sister brand instead.

It’s a unique year in the world of sports, with both the Olympics and Paralympics and the World Cup, and as a result, some organizations have had to reassess their marketing plans. Among them is the Coca-Cola Company, which owns both BodyArmor and Powerade and is giving BodyArmor prime positioning courtside, according to the brand’s VP of marketing, Sara Weaver.

“This is really a part of the evolution for both brands,” Weaver told Marketing Brew. “BodyArmor is going to continue to lead traditional American sports…and Powerade’s commitment and focus is really on the sport of soccer.”

With BodyArmor now running the court, Weaver said the brand’s March Madness plan is to leverage athlete partnerships to reinforce its relevance and the messaging that it’s been pushing since its rebrand last year.

Read more here.—AM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Shane Norris is head of sales at Fyllo, a contextual targeting platform. He has also worked at M3, Roku, and Funny or Die.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I’ve worked on some incredibly fun campaigns over the years, but two come to mind that each taught me a core lesson in this business: when you understand what really matters to a client, great work and great results follow. The first was helping a major car brand reach an audience they typically struggled with, out of their usual age demographic. We solved it by writing an Alanis Morissette parody that not only went viral, but actually led to the client expanding the campaign and signing on for another parody song. (Fun fact: to sell the idea internally, I actually had to sing the parody myself. It worked!) The other standout was launching the first-ever branded TV show on Roku for a liquor brand. It was a bold move that pushed creative boundaries and delivered a huge impact.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: On paper, my résumé might look a little all over the place, but there’s actually a through line: curiosity. I’ve taken jobs across different corners of the media world to scratch the itch of learning how advertising really works, from the inside out, across different brands, users, and categories.

Continue reading here.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Sprite is back as the official global soft drink of the NBA after first partnering with the league in 1986.
• Sun Cruiser is serving as the official ready-to-drink cocktail of this year’s US Open and US Women’s Open as part of a multiyear deal with the US Golf Association.
• Sephora inked a deal to become the official beauty retail partner of F1 Academy.
• Indeed joined the Oracle Red Bull Racing sponsor roster under a multiyear partnership with the F1 team.
• Uber tapped Irish reality TV star Maura Higgins for a St. Patrick’s Day campaign about Irish exits.