The A&W 3/9 lb. Burger

In the 1980s, A&W tried to compete with the immensely popular McDonald’s Quarter Pounder by offering a bigger, juicier 1/3 pound burger at the same price. Unfortunately, Americans aren’t so great at math. Confused consumers wrongly assumed that 1/4 was bigger than 1/3 (You know, because 4 is bigger than 3) and the whole experiment went down in history as a huge marketing fail.
Leaders of the beloved QSR chain—founded in 1919 and the oldest in America—have spent every waking moment since this embarrassing fiasco crunching the numbers, employing a team of top mathematicians and the creative services of ad agency Cornett in an attempt to bounce back with a burger so big and a message so clear that no one in their right mind would think it’s smaller than a puny Quarter Pounder. And they’ve done it!
A&W is launching the 3/9 Pound Burger with a dramatic reenactment of the “Eureka!” moment that led to this possibly Nobel Prize-winning revelation about burger math. Cornett’s video features A&W mascot/math prodigy Rooty the Great Root Bear solving the unsolvable equation. In addition (math pun), a number of creative assets like window clings, table tents, branded memes and GIFs were created for the promotion.