Whopper Virgins

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Burger King has always been #2 behind Mac & never really understood what to do about it.
The logic is always very simple... maybe the American people don't know yet that our burger taste better than Mc Donald. Pepsi 10 years ago tried the same thing and it has never worked. This campaign will not work either, but they have, at least, been able to generate a controversy using cross-culture. How this will translate into sales… nobody knows.

Burger King asked farmers from Romania, a recluse Thai tribe & some other exotic population & places to judge between a whopper & a big mac & tell which one they prefer. Alan Siegel from Siegle & Gale a major branding company sees it as "this could be interpreted as the crass of America to the 3rd world".

Other headlines hype the campaign as "Burger King storms Innocent villages to plunder 'Virgins'" or “What might irk people is the concept that Burger King is taking its fat-laden fast food to people who aren’t used to this stuff in their diets, who aren’t usually subject to our crass commercials, and who probably don’t really care too much.”

One thing we can be sure is that everytime a 3rd world country is involved into a campaign of some sort, it will automatically be interpreted from the ethical point of view & emotion will start to raise higher than usual.

My personal opinion here is that there is no other controversy so far, than the way the mainstream media is approaching the subject. I believe Burger King is doing a bit of ethology, which is interesting from my point of view & for this blog, but will not be effective in marketing terms or branding terms. Again all depends how the campaign is being done. If we start to see Burger Kings jumping out of airplanes in places where people are starving, delivering burgers to ask them how they feel about it… yes they may be in big trouble, unless they decide to become a unicef permanent sponsor, delivering 1 burger to kids (or something healthier) for each whopper sold… which would be a more effective branding idea than trying to find out if their burger are better than Mac.

Coca Cola became the #1 drink & brand in the US because it delivered a bottle for each soldier on the war front during WWII. If Burger King could match that kind of campaign they would not become just the #1 american burger but the #1 world burger.

Whopper Virgins Campaign

Comments (2)

What you fail to address is the question of whether or not controlling and largely democraphobic Third World (sorry, "developing nation") governments will be happy about the arrival within their borders of a company whose slogan for many years was; "Have it your way." Now there's the REAL culture clash! :D