Burger King's 'Smart' Campaign; Influencer Marketing During Coronavirus: Tuesday's First Things First

Welcome to First Things First, Adweek’s daily resource for marketers. We’ll be publishing the content to First Things First on Adweek.com each morning (like this post), but if you prefer that it come straight to your inbox, you can sign up for the email here. Burger King Lets Students Unlock Free Whoppers by Showing Their Smarts Burger King's latest quaran-stunt involves your brain. The fast-food chain wants you to prove your mind is still functioning during this lockdown, which is now approaching a month for some areas of the country. This campaign, which is technically targeted toward high school kids, grills you on subjects ranging from biology and chemistry to math and literature. If you get the question right, you get a coupon for a free Whopper. Other recent campaigns include the brand changing its tagline to the "Stay Home of the Whopper" and Burger King France creating a "Quarantine Whopper" that you can build at home. Watch it: Are you smarter than a Whopper? No, Coronavirus Isn’t the End of Influencer Marketing. But It Has Put It Under a Microscope Here's a few recommendations of what not to do as an influencer: Don't pack up your family and leave Manhattan for a drive cross-country during a pandemic. Don't pack up your kids, nanny and husband after you've tested positive for the coronavirus just so that you can ride this out in the Hamptons. Don't pack up your family and travel to Florida. Actually, whether you're an influencer or just a normal advertising journalist like me, don't do any of those things. Several influencers learned the hard way, as their audiences tore into them for making selfish decisions during the pandemic. While these influencers are a couple of bad marks against the industry, influencers aren't going out of vogue. Many are shifting their content to reflect the current times to try to get by, while others are actually seeing upticks in affiliate sales. Read more: In this excellent digital feature, deputy brands editor Diana Pearl examines the current state of influencer marketing. Publicis Groupe Reports Q1 Earnings, Outlines Cost-Saving Measures The agency holding companies are quickly revealing what they're doing to save jobs during this economic downturn. WPP hasn't cut jobs—yet. IPG has seen some layoffs, most notably at three MullenLowe offices. Now, Publicis Groupe and Dentsu Aegis announced their first moves. At Publicis, which recently launched the much-anticipated Marcel AI platform, a combination of salary cuts for executives, other cost-cutting measures and furloughs have staved off layoffs. At Dentsu, layoffs, furloughs and salary cuts have already been implemented to varying degrees across the company. At this time, it is not clear which of the holding company's agencies have experienced layoffs. Read more: See what Publicis is doing during this crisis. Related: Deutsch Los Angeles went through a staffing reduction last Friday, impacting 10% of staff. How Bush's Beans Found a Way to Venture Outside of the Canned Foods Aisle Bush's Beans has a good thing going as a staple of the American pantry. That didn't stop the 112-year-old brand from finding a new way into the homes of Americans. After market research showed consumers would embrace chips made out of beans, the brand launched a line of bean-based chips and dips. Read more: In the latest issue of Adweek magazine, Bush's and its creative agency Curiosity walked us through the process behind marketing a new product. More stories from the magazine: Screen time is way up for kids. But do you know if the apps they're using are safe? Many have very rocky roads on privacy. Learn more about Messenger for Kids, Spotify Kids and YouTube. Hello Kitty is now a global Olympic ambassador. Unfortunately, she will have to wait for her shot at the spotlight because the Olympics were postponed until 2021. Here's how she became so popular. Best of the Rest: Today's Top News and Insights GMA Producer Thea Trachtenberg Passed Away Easter Morning Barbarian Appoints Resh Sidhu for Top Creative Role Beachfront Media and Amobee Partner to Integrate VOD With the Rest of Programmatic ESPN Is Asking Some of Its Highest-Paid Personalities to Take Paycuts Amazon Will Hire 75,000 Additional Temporary Workers Ad of the Day: How Apple Lovingly Captured the Ways Creativity Is Flourishing in Quarantine [kickout id="1"] In the brand’s newest ad, a lovely and minimalist celebration of life in quarantine, Apple and agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab bring together real footage of families, creators and celebrities around the world. Each is honing a skill, sharing a gift or finding a way to bring a new idea to life. The spot is a perfect cross-section of our culture at its best in such unexpected circumstances. And perhaps most impressively, it was developed, compiled, approved and launched in a span of just two weeks. Here's the story about how it came together.