Burger King Restaurants of Canada is looking to heat up the holiday shopping season with a new Whiplash Whopper and a national ad campaign to promote it.

The ads for the spicier version of the Whopper, which will only be available in Canada, will start running next week in English and French and will continue to the end of December, a typically busy time for QSRs, Jason Keown, senior director of marketing for Burger King Restaurants of Canada, tells MiC.

The 15- and 30-second TV spots will run on Global, Discovery, The Comedy Network and TSN, while radio spots will run in major markets across the country. Online, BK will have ads on Yahoo! and the websites of Global and the UFC.

Initiative Media in Toronto managed the ad buy and Taxi, also in Toronto, handled the creative.

The campaign’s target market is men 25 to 34 years old, which is why the Home of the Whopper is focusing its TV efforts around sporting events (NFL, NHL and NBA) and other male-friendly fare, such as Family Guy, Mythbusters and Man vs. Wild.

‘This is an adventurous sandwich, it has a bold taste,’ Keown says. ‘We want to talk to people that are much more adventurous and open to new things.’

The Whiplash Whopper is a traditional Whopper but with pepper jack cheese, red peppers and spicy mayonnaise.