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Ceres’ 2025 campaign BROMANCE, developed by We Are Social for the Food & Drink market, leans into...
Max Burgers Says Sorry to Italy for the Mighty Mozzarella
Max Burgers' 'The Burger Apology' is a Swedish humorous campaign released in October 2024, in which the brand's CEO and Deputy CEO issue a pre-emptive apology to Italy for combining Italian mozzarella with bacon and lingonberry salsa in the new Mighty Mozzarella burger, produced in collaboration with creative PR agency JMWGolin.
The campaign addresses a real cultural tension. In the years preceding the launch, the international food community had reacted sharply to what critics labelled Italian food crimes — most recently, tinned spaghetti carbonara. When Max Burgers prepared to introduce the Mighty Mozzarella — a burger built on deep-fried mozzarella cheese, bacon, and a lingonberry salsa — the brand recognised that pairing a protected Italian ingredient with distinctly Swedish flavours risked exactly the same kind of backlash. Rather than ignore that risk, the brand leaned into it.
The campaign's central mechanic is a filmed apology, delivered in Swedish by the CEO and Deputy CEO of Max Burgers and then translated into Italian using speech-AI technology. The decision to render the video in Italian rather than English is deliberate: the campaign addresses Italians directly, in their own language, reaching as far into that audience as the digital format allows. The film invites Italians who visit Sweden to try the Mighty Mozzarella before rendering a verdict of food crime, framing the burger not as a provocation but as a sincere, if unconventional, act of culinary creativity. The campaign carries the Italian subtitle 'Scusa di un hamburger della Svezia' — A Swedish burger apology — underscoring both the geographic market of origin and the cross-cultural ambition of the work. Clapboard rates this campaign 63 out of 100.
Max Burgers occupies a specific position in the Swedish fast-food market. The brand operates approximately 160 restaurants across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the United Arab Emirates, according to Max Se, making it one of the largest homegrown burger chains in Scandinavia and a direct domestic competitor to global players such as McDonald's and Burger King, both of which maintain significant presences in Sweden. Where McDonald's holds the largest share of the global burger market, according to metatechinsights.com, Max Burgers competes not on scale but on brand identity — positioning itself as the proudly Swedish alternative, with a menu that repeatedly draws on local ingredients and flavour profiles.
The Mighty Mozzarella burger crystallises that tension between local identity and international ingredients. Lingonberry salsa is an unmistakably Swedish touch; mozzarella is unmistakably Italian. The campaign's strategic insight is that this combination, rather than being a liability, is a story — and that the story is most effectively told as a self-aware, humorous campaign that pre-empts criticism rather than deflecting it. JMWGolin, the Stockholm-based creative PR agency behind the work, has applied a comparable instinct in previous campaigns for the brand, including the 2022 'Eat with Your Ears' campaign, which recorded consumer reactions to a new fried-chicken burger launch, as documented on adsoftheworld.com.
The broader Swedish food industry context reinforces the strategic rationale. The global hamburger market was valued at approximately US$82.6 billion in 2024, according to metatechinsights.com, with a forecast compound annual growth rate of 5.6 percent through 2035. In a competitive environment of that scale, product launches require more than distribution — they require cultural permission. 'The Burger Apology' functions as exactly that: a public request for permission, wrapped in comedy, directed at the one audience culturally positioned to grant or withhold it.
Samuel Garlöv, Creative Director at JMWGolin, serves as the named creative lead on 'The Burger Apology,' as documented on clapboard.com. Garlöv previously directed the creative on JMWGolin's 2022 'Eat with Your Ears' campaign for Max Burgers, according to adsoftheworld.com, establishing a continuity of creative voice between the two projects. The production team includes Jonas Böttiger as video producer, Ebba Carlsson as project manager, and PR support from Elsa Ahlström and Elias Hedström, all of JMWGolin, per clapboard.com. On the brand side, Henric Byström, Head of Communications at Max Burgers, Helena Stenqvist, PR Manager, and Alexandra Törnqvist, Social Media Specialist, are credited as the client team, according to clapboard.com. Björn Mellstrand served as Client Director at JMWGolin, per clapboard.com.
The central creative decision is the use of speech-AI to translate the Swedish-language apology into Italian. This is not a subtitling choice — it is a dubbing and voice-synthesis choice, one that allows the CEOs to appear to speak directly to an Italian audience in their language. The effect is both comedic and disarming. The executives are not actors; their visible seriousness in delivering what is, structurally, an absurd apology is what generates the humour. The format borrows the visual grammar of a genuine corporate statement — two senior leaders, a camera, a formal declaration — and places it in the service of a burger launch.
The film is the campaign's sole media asset, per clapboard.com, making the creative execution fully dependent on the strength of a single piece of content. The AI translation layer adds a layer of craft that doubles as a talking point: the technology is itself newsworthy in a food industry context, extending the campaign's reach beyond the original Swedish market by giving Italian-speaking audiences a reason to engage with content not originally produced for them.
No verified independent performance data for 'The Burger Apology' campaign is publicly available at the scale that would allow a full sales attribution analysis. The campaign film recorded 3,346 views, 20 likes, and 3 comments on the platform where it was archived, according to clapboard.com. These figures reflect the campaign's documented digital footprint at time of publication and do not account for distribution across Max Burgers' owned social channels or earned media coverage in Sweden or Italy.
For context, Max Burgers has previously demonstrated that product-launch campaigns tied to specific burger introductions can drive significant sales outcomes. According to max.se, the Mighty Mozzarella burger generated a 110 percent sales increase in its first week of availability in Poland, with a 50 percent sales increase recorded from 15 November through 31 December 2023 compared to the same period in 2022 in that market. Those results are attributed to the Polish launch and are not directly attributable to 'The Burger Apology' Swedish campaign published in October 2024, as noted by clapboard.com.
Structurally, the campaign is built for earned media amplification rather than paid reach. A single film, delivered by two executives, using AI voice synthesis, and addressed to an entire nation, carries the hallmarks of content designed to be covered rather than bought. No verified awards recognition for this campaign has been found across Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, the Clios, or the Webby Awards, according to clapboard.com. The campaign has not been shortlisted on any of those platforms at the time of writing.
'The Burger Apology' is a humorous Swedish campaign released in October 2024, in which Max Burgers' CEO and Deputy CEO issue a filmed apology to Italy for combining Italian mozzarella with bacon and lingonberry salsa in the new Mighty Mozzarella burger. The film was produced with JMWGolin and translated into Italian using speech-AI technology, per clapboard.com.
Max Burgers apologised to Italy because the Mighty Mozzarella burger pairs a celebrated Italian ingredient with distinctly Swedish flavours. The campaign pre-empted criticism by framing the combination as a respectful act of culinary creativity. It drew on a broader cultural conversation about Italian food crimes that had been circulating in the international food community, as documented on clapboard.com.
JMWGolin, a Stockholm-based creative PR agency, created the campaign in collaboration with Max Burgers. Samuel Garlöv served as Creative Director at JMWGolin, according to clapboard.com. The brand-side team included Henric Byström as Head of Communications, Helena Stenqvist as PR Manager, and Alexandra Törnqvist as Social Media Specialist at Max Burgers.
The Mighty Mozzarella is a Max Burgers product built around deep-fried mozzarella cheese, bacon, and lingonberry salsa. The lingonberry salsa is a distinctly Swedish element paired with the Italian-origin mozzarella, and this combination is the source of the campaign's humorous apology concept, as described on clapboard.com and max.se.
Max Burgers used speech-AI technology to translate and dub the Swedish-language apology film into Italian, allowing the CEOs to appear to address Italian audiences directly in their own language. This technical choice extended the campaign's cultural reach beyond Sweden and added a layer of craft that reinforced the film's central comedic premise, per clapboard.com.
No verified awards recognition for 'The Burger Apology' has been found across Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, the Clios, or the Webby Awards, according to clapboard.com. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The campaign film recorded 3,346 views, 20 likes, and 3 comments on the archived platform at the time of writing.
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