Fernando Machado (Burger King)
Fernando Machado (Burger King)
Fernando Machado is a marketing executive. He is currently the Head of Marketing of Burger King. He was also the Vice President of Global Brand Development for Dove at Unilever. [1]
Career
Unilever (1996 - 2014)
Fernando Machado started his career at Unilever.
He first worked there when he was a college student, working on a small detergent brand in Brazil.
He ended up leaving the company after 18 years.
His last position there was Global Brand Development Vice-President for Dove. He also worked with Pond's in Latin America, Vaseline Global.
Dove
While Fernando Machado worked at Dove Global, he oversaw a significant part of the business.
As Vice President of Dove's global brand development, he helped the Masterbrand team by leading the charge in several ad campaigns.
These include the Dove Ad Makeover, Dove Camera Shy, and the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaigns.
Burger King (2014 - Present)
On March 24, 2014, it was announced that Fernando Machado would be the Senior Vice President of Global Brand Management for Burger King. He relocated from London to Miami for the position.
Controversy with Google & Wikipedia
The beginning of the infamous 'Burger King | Connected" ad: "Okay, Google: What is the Whopper burger?"
On April 4, 2017, Burger King posted a 15-second demo advertisement about the Whopper. In the ad, a man prompts his Google Home (a voice-activated speaker) to start reading a description of the Whopper from Wikipedia.
This gained notoriety particularly because someone under the Wikipedia username Fermachado123 (which closely mirrors Fernando Machado's name) edited the Wikipedia page to make it manipulate what the Google Home device said in the audio clip.
Wikipedia eventually wrote an open letter to Burger King and several media companies about the advertising campaign.
It specifically demanded that:
Burger King apologize to their editors and their readers,
Burger King complies with their terms-of-use and posts on Wikipedia its paid editing accounts, the articles edited by them, and any affiliated editors or organizations involved in the editing since June 16, 2014, and
Burger King’s parent corporation, Restaurant Brands International and RBI’s parent, 3G Capital take responsibility for ensuring that Burger King fulfills its responsibilities and that similar incidents not be repeated.
Neither Burger King nor Fernando Machado have yet to apologize for any actions committed on Wikipedia's platform.
Awards & Accomplishments
In 2013, Fernando Machado was award the Grand Brand Genius award by Adweek. He was also labeled International Marketer of the Year that year by M&M Global.