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Burger"king" and what went wrong - Charon - 03-20-2019
How Burger King Went From McDonald's Greatest Rival To Total Train Wreck
Mallory Russell Apr. 15, 2012, 12:37 PM
burger king
After Justice Holdings acquired Burger King this month, it announced a major rebranding and image change, updating its menus and adding to its management ranks.
The chain has struggled with a decline in sales since 2008. It lost its No. 2 spot to Wendy's in March.
The new branding is supposed to be a fresh start. But just as things were looking up, a spot featuring Mary J. Blige outraged consumers with its racial stereotypes.
Most brands can move past controversies like this with a heartfelt apology and a donation to charity. For Burger King, however, this is just the latest is a string of marketing blunders it's committed over the past four years. Coupled with the recession and the growing success of McDonald's and Wendy's, Burger King couldn't be in more trouble.
2003: Burger King gets new management and reactivates "The King."
Things had been bad at Burger King for a long time: through the late 1990's, revenues were declining, market share was down, and the company was tied with Wendy's for the No. 2 fast-feeder spot. So when then-owner Diageo sold Burger King in 2002 to TPG Capital for $1.5 billion, the company looked at the deal as a clean slate.
In 2003, Burger King's then-chief marketer Russ Klein hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky as the chain's ad agency. CP+B, under charismatic chief creative Alex Bogusky, was the hottest, hippest ad agency in the U.S. The stage was set for a comeback.
One of CP+B's first major decisions to was to resurrect "The King," a brand icon the company had ditched in the 1980s.
The decision would prove fateful.
2008: Burger King started selling absurdly expensive burgers.
Flickr/yoanimus
In the U.K., a Burger King started selling a gourmet burger for $190.
"The idea is to change perceptions by pushing the envelope to raise awareness of our ambitions," Mark Dowding, Burger King's head of product and innovation for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Ad Age. "We have emphasized the quality to create noise and interest in the market."
The recession was in full swing and the PR stunt made BK look out of touch.
The brand hit its peak between 2004 and 2007 with campaigns like "Subservient Chicken" and "Whopper Freakout"
CP+B revived the brand by bringing back the company's mascot, "The King," and reverting to the tried-and-true slogan "Have it your way."
As an extension of that slogan, the agency created "Subservient Chicken," a website where consumers could type commands and watch a giant chicken act them out. The website had 20 million hits in the first week.
The "Whopper Freakout" campaign saw Burger King employees telling customers the famous sandwich had been discontinued and recording their reactions. The campaign resulted in double-digit increases in quarterly sales that year.
Around 2008, the ads became more controversial. This one infuriated women.
To increase sales, the chain decided to zero in on "super-fans": 18-to-34 year old men. While the sense of humor the brand used may have engaged that group, it alienated many others.
This ad ran in Singapore in 2009, but annoyed women all over the world.
It was the first in a series that drew anger from consumers ...
************************************************************
And its employees started taking baths in the kitchen.
This teenager Burger King employee in Ohio thought it would be funny to post a video of himself bathing in his store's kitchen sink.
The "Whopper Virgins" campaign drew criticism from sociologists and nutritionists.
The
"Whopper Virgins" (2008)
This taste-test campaign had rural Romanian farmers, Thai villagers and those living in Greenland's icy tundra—people who had never eaten a burger before—compare the Whopper to the Big Mac.
Sharon Akabas of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University told The New York Daily News: "What's next? Are we going to start taking guns out to some of these remote places and ask them which one they like better?"
Brian Morrissey of Adfreak likened the commercials to colonialism, saying it's "embarrassing and emblematic of how ignorant Americans still seem to the rest of the world."
The Mexican government took issue with this ad.
Texican Whopper (2009)
This commercial, which promoted the Texican Whopper, depicted a tall American cowboy living with a much smaller Mexican wrestler.
The Mexican government was angered on two counts, NBC Miami reported at the time:
The ads "improperly used the stereotyped image of a Mexican."
In the spot, the wrestler is wearing the Mexican flag as a cape. The country has a tradition of respect for its flag and has strict rules about how it is used.
The next group Burger King offended were the Hindus.
Breakfast Sandwiches (2009)
It's not surprising why: The ad, which ran in Spain, depicts Lakshmi sitting on top of a ham sandwich—a sacred religious figure from a vegetarian religion selling meat.
Mental health professionals thought this commercial was in bad taste.
"The King's Gone Crazy" (2010)
This commercial shows The King running through an office to give a woman a sandwich, while he is chased by two orderlies.
Dr. Trula LaCalle, Executive Director of National Alliance of Mental Health Illness California commented, "It's denigrating, that kind of advertising." She added, "That stereotyping reduces people's ability to feel pride and dignity in themselves when they've been suffering from a mental illness, and they're in recovery from that."
Then there was this overly sexual kid's ad.
"SpongeBob Square Butt" (2009)
For a SpongeBob Square Pants promotion targeting children, Burger King created a spot that used a remixed version of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back."
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) launched a letter-writing campaign demanding that Nickelodeon and Burger King pull the "highly sexualized" ad.
In the UK, this girl sang in the shower for men every morning to promote breakfast.
"Singing in the Shower"(2009)
Every morning at 9:30 AM, Burger King broadcast this woman in the shower. A Burger King spokesman admitted to Ad Age the sexist campaign would turn women off:
"Our research showed that breakfast is a male-centric audience for Burger King; it doesn't resonate as well with women—we are targeting the people who are buying breakfast."
Then Burger King got sued by the Postal Service.
Flickr/bradleygee and KB35
A 2010 commercial showed a mailman admitting he shirked his responsibilities in order to eat the chain's French toast sticks and "Double Crossain'wich."
USPS successfully sued Burger King for using its logo and likeness of its uniform, and the company was forced to revise the spot.
This commercial also angered dog lovers, who didn't appreciate the stereotype of dogs biting mailmen.
Eventually, sales fell off a cliff.
Flickr/Elsie esq.
"Whopper Freakout" put the company ahead of the industry in terms of growth in 2008. But by spring 2009 Burger King had fallen behind again and a number of stores closed. Same-store sales declined 5 percent in Q2 2009.
"We've been impacted because of marketing faux pas," said a franchisee to Ad Age. "And I can't imagine that on some level didn't impact this particular announcement."
A big issue with Burger King's marketing strategy was that it was only talking to young male "super fans." Ad Age reported that 29 percent of Burger King customers in 2010 were actually over 50 years old.
Those that weren't offended were generally frightened by "The King."
Bob Garfield of Ad Age described him best:
"Likewise the King ... is not only un-animated but frozen in place, a grotesque death mask of a grin, like something out of a John Carpenter movie. You don't know whether you're going to have it your way or he's going to have his way with you."
Then commercials started showing him sneaking into people's bedrooms. It was enough for Time to name The King one of the 10 creepiest brand mascots.
The King was killed eventually off in 2011, before the Burger King movie got off the ground.
In September 2009, Russ Klein began talking about dragons—and then left the company.
Flickr/tm-tm
The marketing chief took a leave of absence and said cryptically that he was, "Simply 'sharpening the sword.' And the bigger the dragon waiting for me when I return, the better. That's all you need to know. Print it."
It's never good news when the CMO disappears without a real explanation. So it was no surprise when Klein officially left Burger King three months later, in November. (He eventually cited exhaustion from the intensity of the job.)
Klein is now CMO at another fast-feeder, Arby's.
He wasn't the only executive to jump ship.
Flickr/Andrei
Natalia Fraco left Burger King in February 2011 after only nine months as CMO.
North American CMO Mike Kappitt left the company in December 2010.
Tia Lang, Media and Interactive Director, left the company in July 2011. At the same time, it was reported by Ad Age that a number of marketing employees were offered severance packages.
Flavia Faugeres is currently the CMO of Burger King.
BK's own restaurants started suing the company.
Wikimedia Commons/Brad Shorr
In 2010, Burger King was sued twice by its the National Franchisee Association, which represents BK's own restaurant owners:
Franchisees claimed that they were losing money on some products because they were not allowed to sell them for more than one dollar.
Franchisees sued earlier in 2010 to stop Burger King from stealing millions of dollars in annual rebates due to franchisees from soda companies. Burger King would have used those dollars for advertising, which franchisees were also upset with.
In 2011, CP+B dumped Burger King, according to Alex Bogusky.
Wikimedia Commons/Coolcaesar
In March 2011, Burger King issued a statement that it had parted ways with Crispin Porter + Bogusky after seven years.
Alex Bogusky, no longer with the agency, saw it differently:
"When you work in the industry and head up an agency, you tend to have to shut up and take it. Just release some nice quote about "creative differences" and how you wish your former client all the best. Now, not so much. We fired Miller and it was a decision I'll always be proud of for lots of reasons beyond the work. And my guess is that CPB decided it was time to part with BK. It might have been a mutual decision in the end but my hunch is that they had too much creative integrity to do the kind of work the new BK team was asking for. And I'm proud of them if that's what went down."
CP+B may (or may not) have resigned one of its biggest accounts, but in early 2012 it was rewarded with the Arby's account by Russ Klein, without a review.
Bogusky then stabbed Burger King in the back.
In 2008, while Burger King and Domino's were still on his client roster, Bogusky published a diet book called "The 9-inch Diet" which encouraged readers to cut down on their portion size. The back cover promised that "The best tricksters in the industry explain how you as a consumer are being duped and how you are actually part of the conspiracy to make you fat."
An executive at Burger King at the time told Ad Age that the company had not authorized the book and felt blindsided when they read about it.
Then, shortly before leaving the agency in 2010, Bogusky took to his blog to express his disapproval of advertising to children. He mentioned that while Burger King had discussed pulling its kids advertising, in the end the money the company could make won out over ethics.
"When it comes to advertising to children, it's much more difficult to find any redeeming value created by the activity. In fact, to the contrary, it is easy to see how destructive the process is to most of us," he wrote.
Not long after, Burger King got a new PR agency and a new media agency.
In July 2011, Mindshare "proactively resigned" the $300 million media buying account, according to executives familiar with the situation.
The same month, Edelman and Burger King parted ways. The company, which had worked with Burger King since 2005, had been invited into a review, but declined to pitch the business again.
The biggest blow of all: Wendy's becomes the No.2 fast-food restaurant in the U.S.
Burger King tried to keep up with McDonald's, which had a 49.5 percent market share, but Wendy's was the real threat. With higher-quality menu items, and a revamp of its stores, Wendy's finally surpassed Burger King in late 2011.
In 2012, amid an obesity epidemic, BK launched a 966-calorie burger.
Burger King
With nearly 1,000 calories and 58 grams of fat, the Smoked Bacon & Cheddar Double Angus burger outraged consumers and health critics in the U.K.
Burger King seemed to be copying McDonald's in every area except the one that was driving a good portion of its success—healthy menu items.
Public or private—make your mind up!
Flickr/World Economic Forum
Burger King went public for the first time in 2006. Then it became private in 2010. And in April 2012, it announced it will go public, again.
Just when the brand thought it could begin anew, it offended people, again.
Screengrab
Mary J. Blige slammed the company after starring in one of its commercials, claiming the final version was not what she signed on for.
The rest of the country was outraged that Blige was about "crispy chicken," which played up racial stereotypes.
And now, the bacon ice-cream sundae.
Foodbeast
What's next for BK? The chain is experimenting with a bacon sundae in Nashville, Tenn. That's bacon and ice cream in a dish. No doubt it will be a huge hit.
If you thought Burger King's advertising was offensive ...
These Modern Ads Are Even More Sexist Than Their 'Mad Men' Era Counterparts >
More: Just Plain Wrong Advertising Burger King Branding
Just bored. I have heard that the king did not get paid. went to court. and the replacement creepy guy is not allowed to speak, have lines. He just scares people.
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - folken - 03-20-2019
I can see why BK is going down.
Burger King in my small town went bust 3 or 4 years ago.
Never came back here, and we got at least 2 or 3 of all it's competitors.
No 1 misses it except my BF, who loved it and I hated it cause the burgers were sloppy...……….
No loss-- IMHO
Folken
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - Charon - 03-20-2019
Well in truth, the last admin of ioplist.com was Evil Tester. He lived up to his name.
And after he banned fifty to 100 of us on one day: Stating YOU ARE DONE, he put up his real picture to be accessible and liked by people. Did not work.
And we all whom knew him and saw that image, always laugh cuz ET wore what looked like a burger king crown.
I think the guy is really creepy in commercials. as is ET in real life.
But I am mocking the rat whom banned us all cuz we would not have allowed vogue and pink to own the forum.
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - folken - 03-21-2019
Gotta admit it; I am a fast food junky...…….
Partial to 5 guys & Subway lately. If you haven't tried 5 guys it's well worth it-- burger/fries & a coke---- heaven!...…..
Folken
ps-- yeah that BKing guy is creepy...……...
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - Cantique - 04-19-2019
This is making me hungry! And it's slightly over my head. Although I wouldn't thank you for Burger King fries, they are too crispy. McDs on the other hand... perfect.
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - Charon - 04-19-2019
BURGER KING IS NOW MESSING AROUND AND HAVING THE GOOGLE EAVESDROPPERS IN YOUR HOME IS GREAT FOR BURGER KING TO MAKE COMMERCIALS YOU MUST HEAR.
Burger King developed a national ad campaign that could trigger guests voices on smart technology, of people who have enabled voice commands on their smart speaker technology. (Burger King)
Burger King thought it had a great idea. Instead, it ended up with a Whopper of a problem.
A Burger King in Los Angeles has specials plastered on its windows in this 2015 photo. (Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)
By Hayley Tsukayama April 13, 2017
Update: Burger King successfully ran an alternate version of its advertisement designed to trigger Google Home devices late Wednesday, the company said in an emailed statement Thursday. "Last night, Burger King launched very similar commercials that 100% triggered the smart speaker technology. The commercials aired during Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon," said spokeswoman Dara Schopp. The company altered the ad's audio in such a way that it was able to get around whatever block the Google Home had against the original commercial. Schopp also said that Burger King saw a 300 percent increase in "social conversation" on Twitter as compared to the day before — indicating that, good or bad, the commercial got people talking about the company.
Original report: A Burger King ad designed to trigger Google's voice-activated Home smart speaker and have the device advertise the Whopper no longer works.
The ad, released Wednesday, features an actor dressed as a Burger King employee, who says, “Okay, Google: What is the Whopper burger?” The line is meant to trigger the device to reel off the definition of a Whopper using the first line of the burger's Wikipedia page. (Yes, the Whopper has its own Wikipedia page.)
Burger King: Connected Whopper
Burger King developed a national ad campaign that could trigger guests who have enabled voice commands on their smart speaker technology. (Burger King)
Roughly three hours after the ad launched, the ad stopped working. Google's Home would only light up in response to the commercial's prompt and stay mum (although it will give you the first line of the Wikipedia article if you explicitly request the definition of a “Whopper burger”).
The fast-food company confirmed that the ad no longer triggers the speaker, but it said it would still air the ad — and indicated that the ad may start working again. “You’ll have to tune in tonight to see if the commercial triggers the Whopper sandwich definition response,” said Burger King spokesman Brooke Scher Mogan.
Mogan said Burger King saw the ad as an opportunity to “do something exciting with the emerging technology of intelligent personal assistant devices.”
Google did not respond to requests for comment.
A person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak on the record said the fast-food chain did not consult Google before making the commercial.
While commercials — often those about home hubs — have accidentally triggered voice assistants in people's homes before, this seems to be the first time an ad has tried to do it intentionally. Based on comments on the ad's YouTube page, many consumers did not appreciate having their devices hijacked.
“When you take over someones phone or tablet and have it do your own remote commands intentionally, you are HACKING,” read one comment.
In fact, it may be a blessing for Burger King that the ad no longer works as intended because the advertisement almost immediately backfired on the fast-food chain. Once the ad started gaining attention, Wikipedia users began altering the first line of the article about Burger King's Whopper. These edits included references to the burger as “cancer-causing” and stating that its ingredients include “cyanide.”
It appears that Burger King itself tried to fix the Wikipedia problem. The first sentence changed to a suspiciously glowing description of the Whopper, authored by user “Fermachado123" — a name that sounds similar to Fernando Machado, Burger King's senior vice president for global brand management.
Burger King did not confirm or deny that Machado edited the article.
Privacy concerns about voice-activated speakers and the connected home have been on the rise as more companies have introduced these products, putting pressure on the makers of voice-operated security systems and door locks to ensure that their devices can't be triggered by unauthorized voices.
The place of advertising on the Google Home and similar products has been thoroughly debated by users as they have become more commonplace. Many users don't want to be spammed with ads delivered by what they consider personal assistants. Google subjected itself to criticism after Home users heard what appeared to be an unprompted plug for Disney's “Beauty and Beast” when the film opened last month.
Google said at the time that mentioning the film wasn't meant to be an ad but simply a notice to users about what was timely that day, according to a statement provided to CNET. “We're continuing to experiment with new ways to surface unique content for users and we could have done better in this case,” a Google spokesman said.
Last Updated:04/18/2019
washingtonpost.com
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RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - folken - 05-14-2019
No place safe from targeted ads I see. < anything to make a buck >
Guess is Burger King is not the only one thinking about, or trying out this targeted ad scheme.
We all just walking sources of info, waiting to be mined.
Folken
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - Bubba Gamps - 08-19-2020
I always liked Burger King and the Whopper. I will only go to McDonalds if I''m hungry and I have no choice. I guess it's because the kids would always want to go to Micky D's because they had an indoor play area. We have all three in the community where I live, but I prefer Wendy's to all of them. All three of the fast food restaurants are busy all of the time
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - Charon - 08-19-2020
Actually, we did stuff like this when we were private. We had just been banned, fifty of us on one day, and he took the forum from me. I was never to work with Evil Tester.
So, as I usually have an open offer to host a forum, The fifty of us whom were banned so ET could sell ioplist.com to vogue rx, we all started a new forum.
And Evil Tester wore a burger king crown. And would post to me. And he is as creepy as the many whom played the King of burger king was.
He was taken off the air cuz he snuck into girls college dorms to get them to "eat his breakfast." So, it was an inside joke.
We don't even remember how many threads we have done. Or how many u new people will find. eh gads.
RE: Burger"king" and what went wrong - TrayGold - 08-29-2020
That picture he posted was one of the most bizarre, disturbing pictures I've ever seen. He was a creeper for sure.