At Quick, Kevin and Dirk are the brand guardians.

In 2016, Burger Brands, with Quick in its portfolio after detours via France, returned to 100% Belgian shareholders. After a competition, they choose Happiness. In 2023, their collaboration is rewarded with a Gold Effie. On March 5th, Burger Brands announced that, again after the competition, they chose Happiness, this time for Burger King. I speak via Teams on February 28th with Dirk Lammens, with Burger Brands since 2005 and is now Head of Marketing. And with Karen Corrigan, also since 2005 co-founder and CEO of Happiness Anywhere and now president of your very own ACC. Lammens and Corrigan already knew on the 28th that Happiness would also work for Burger King, but they couldn't say it yet. This gives our conversation about their collaboration a spicy twist.

Quick is 'quick' in everything.

Lammens: "Since 2016, we could determine our own brand strategy again. We, including CEO Kevin Derycke and myself. Our insight was: 'As a Belgian company, Quick knows the Belgian taste best and only Quick can credibly present a Belgian hamburger.' I had already worked eleven years at Burger Brands and am essentially the walking brand memory for Quick."
Corrigan: "At many clients, people change regularly. Kevin and Dirk have been there since day one, and they are still the contact persons for our team and for me. Such short approval lines enable us to know each other well and talk openly with each other. For some clients, approval must pass through eight people. Ogilvy said, 'There are no statues for committees in the park.'" Lammens: "Our team talks to their team. If an extra check or decision layer is needed, it can happen immediately. If something is unclear, Karen calls me or I or Kevin call her. Because a Quick campaign has a high pace, we do it immediately. We are a chain where a few hundred people come to eat in each restaurant at noon and in the evening. That pace is in our DNA. It's never quiet."
Corrigan: "I think one of the reasons for the success of the collaboration is indeed that we always keep talking to each other, one-on-one or two-on-one. Because Dirk and Kevin are truly the brand guardians. Due to the normal, very healthy tension that must exist between advertiser and agency, where the agency occasionally pushes and the advertiser holds back a bit, we evolve with Quick towards increasingly stronger work."

Taking time for the brand story

Corrigan: "For the brand campaign, we do take more time, these are also larger campaigns that are conducted for one and a half to two years depending on the GRPs. We have developed a kind of rhythm for that along the way. No routine, but we start working on next year's campaign at the end of March already. The dates are almost fixed. Everyone knows perfectly what needs to happen when."
Lammens: "I already said that the pace of a Quick campaign is quite high, but under that action layer, there is a brand story. We have gradually built together how best to take our time for that branding." Corrigan: "That brand story is also becoming more and more fundamental because we incorporate more and more elements into it. On a marketing and communication level, it is almost entirely 360° by now." Lammens: "There is a lot of talk about 360° and you can theoretically want to align that, but that takes time. Making everything work together, that needs to grow. The CRM story, the social story, the restaurants themselves, and also the products. Everything at Quick now follows the same line and reinforces each other."


Collaborating on New Burger Ideas

Corrigan: "In the beginning, we had to crack the 'Belgian' aspect, but the agency's involvement in developing Belgian burgers was a search. A crucial insight was to conceive new products together. Take the burger in the shape of a waffle. The idea arises in co-creation. The teams of Dirk and product manager Dorrit Wouters develop such a jointly grown idea, once approved, with great ambition. Just execute it."
Lammens: "And then you get purely Belgian concepts like the Cyclist, the Patron (a burger with a beer sauce), or a burger by the young Belgian chef Loïc Van Impe, alongside the Waffle. Quick succeeds in making products that support the brand in this way. That is very strong and thus Quick could develop a real 360°. When we now talk about products, we immediately talk about the brand."
Corrigan: "That mutual trust also allows the agency to come up with crazy ideas that are not immediately punished." Lammens: "In our defense, or just not: we also come up with crazy ideas, sometimes marketers have ideas that you could say..." Corrigan: "Are you crazy or what...?" Lammens: "So it's a mutual exchange in craziness." Corrigan: "And we're not concerned with: who found what."

'For better and for worse...'

Corrigan: "I made my wedding vows in Scots (starts speaking with a strong accent): 'For better and for worse, for richer and for poorer….' We do so much together that it's almost inevitable that something goes wrong occasionally. You need to tackle that together. And we know very well that we are only as good as the last thing we did. That doesn't even need to be spoken out loud anymore. Happiness is very aware of Kevin and Dirk's ambitions: as a local agency, we have to earn our clients every day. And then we can also discuss if necessary. Depending on the responsibilities, we are always open about the 'price to pay'. Quick takes theirs, we take ours, and then we solve that. So there is not only the b2c communication but also that among ourselves." Lammens: "And for me, there are very few grey areas."
Corrigan: "Happiness has its mirror organization where we plan a year in advance when we talk to each other. Even if there is nothing on the agenda, we still sit down together. Dirk and I have been in the business long enough to see problems coming weeks in advance and then we focus on them immediately. That saves a lot of time in the end." Lammens: "Because we are transparent and settle things immediately, we also don't have the reflex: it goes wrong, so we pitch. We pitch every day and expect that from our agency too. The chance that we would be fundamentally dissatisfied is very small, precisely because we constantly keep each other sharp."
Corrigan: "We are now starting on the trajectory towards 2025 and our teams get the message: 'Hey, it's new business hè'. I know that Kevin or Dirk can call me tomorrow: we pull the plug. We'll talk first, about that mutual trust is there. There is that constant pressure and even when things are not going well, we keep it positive. The line between healthy and unhealthy pressure may be elusive and if necessary, I'll say that and we'll see how we can deal with it. We solve that quickly. It may have been due to a misunderstanding or frustration... Keeping that boundary between healthy and unhealthy in check is as fundamental as growing to 360°. And that's why it's important that our culture and that of Quick match well, we put everything on the table right away."
 

Strict but fair

Lammens: "That doesn't mean we're an easy client." Corrigan: "Strict but fair." Lammens: "It's also not my calling to be sympathetic. I'm here to develop the brand. It needs to grow and Happiness needs to go along with it. And I believe that by now, after all these years, they have also grown to love the brand a bit." Corrigan: "It's a healthy combination: on the one hand, setting the bar very high - why else would I be in this profession? - and on the other hand, knowing when it's serious and still having a great time. And thus the work gets better and better." Lammens: "What I really like is that Happiness didn't come with questions like 'What is the USP and this and that' back then. They did ask us: 'What are you here for? If Quick weren't here, what would be missing?' If you can answer that question well and continue to execute the whole thing well, then you deliver good work for your client. And then you win a Gold Effie, which I am quite happy with." Corrigan: "Our strategist Frans Cuypers, who made the case, described it like this: 'Despite Quick starting with a battle they could never win, more specifically how to compete with a Burger King and a McDo, through the strategy and the creative implementation, we now have a battle the others can no longer win. We turned it around.' Lammens: "From the start, it was: only a Belgian company can bring a Belgian brand with a Belgian agency, with unique Belgian products. Only Quick can do that."

- Josephine Overeem -