When it comes to making bad marketing decisions, Burger King is king.
Advertisements that were done in bad taste, bogus new menu items, poorly calculated sales
campaigns... you name it and Burger King has probably done it.
These are the dumbest things that Burger King has ever done.
Trying to reinvent the French fry probably isn't the smartest idea when you haven't even
perfected the original version.
And yet, that's exactly what Burger tried to do in 2013 with the launch of their so-called
"Satisfries."
"Crispy and fluffy.
Satisfry our lives."
Satisfries were meant to be the french fry's more hip and healthier cousin and Burger King
promised that these newfangled that had 40 percent less fat and 30 percent fewer calories.
Still, there are some foods that our society will just never consider healthy and french
fries are definitely one of them.
In fact, we imagine they're sitting at the top of the list somewhere between deep-fried
Oreos and cheese doodles.
Well, the folks at Burger King found out pretty quickly that Satisfries weren't satisfying
their customers at all, and the menu item got kicked to the curb in less than a year.
So what went wrong, exactly?
For starters, Satisfries were more expensive than Burger King's regular fries, and the
fast food chain simply couldn't convince people that the fries were worth the extra cost.
Burger King launched the new Satisfries in the hopes of competing with other supposedly
healthier options like Chipotle and Panera , but consumers just weren't buying it either
literally or figuratively.
Satisfries — or, as some witty folks on social media called them, "saddest fries"
prove that some snacks are best left alone.
Please don't mess with our French fries, Burger King.
One thing we know: People don't go to Burger King for when they have a hankering for health food.
And they certainly don't go there when the occasion calls for table service.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with a fast food joint offering some form of table service.
In fact, Chick-fil-A has been doing this for years, but it's rather hard to change public
perception after decades of routine, even if you suddenly trot out a few overzealous servers.
"Tick tick tick tick, it's almost time for the dinner basket crowd to come here — are
you ready to go?
Get loosened up, Shirley."
Still, back in the 1990s, some big shot in the Burger King corporate offices thought
that people wanted Burger King employees to bring them not just a tray, but a so-called
dinner basket.
At the time, a highfalutin Burger King spokesperson told the Associated Press,
″Historically when our consumers think of fast food, they think of breakfast and lunch,
and we've listened to our consumers who say they really want a different dining experience
at dinner.″
Burger King even tapped '90s MTV personality Dan Cortese to give their table service some
theoretical cool points, and some restaurants were even decked out with tablecloths and
napkin rings.
They really did their best trying to convince people that they were now a classier step
above the competition, but the idea just didn't land, and Burger King soon went back to the
way they'd always operated.
As far as fast food mascots go, The King is one serious creeper and he's been hanging
around for way too long, in our opinion.
Get out of our heads, King.
And get out of our video games!
Decades ago, the King was portrayed by an actual human being.
"That's not the real Magic Burger King!
"Oh yes it is."
"Oh no it's not!"
"Oh yes it is!"
"THE MAGIC BURGER KING!"
Sure, he may have been kinda dorky, but at least he wasn't a plastic-headed weirdo who
ominously lurked outside bedroom windows.
“Ah”
The revived Burger King mascot of the early 2000s may have won some advertising awards,
but according to Forbes, his presence actually hurt the company's sales.
Even way back in 2009, it was apparent that the King was doing more harm than good, but
Burger King kept him around for another two years before finally dethroning the bobble-headed
bozo.
For a few years anyway...
In 2015, Burger King brought the King back and somehow managed to make him even creepier
than he was before.
No small feat.
He was now pole dancing, sneaking into people's bedrooms, and just being a big ole' freak,
even if he is of regal bearing.
Perhaps in an attempt to reignite interest in The King, BK decided that 2018 was the
year he should finally speak, paired up with Budweiser for an unfortunate ad campaign.
He's how that went:
"Aaaahh!"
"Waaaa!"
"Aaahhh!"
"Hello?"
"Whassup?"
He's still currently lurking about and doing things like delivering UberEats whether customers
want him around or not.
McDonald's Happy Meals probably won't make you happy if you're over the age of 10, but
Burger King's supposed satire of the product certainly wasn't anything to cheer about, either.
"Yeah I'm blue / kinda down / Can't wait to leave this close-minded town."
The fast food chain made a misguided attempt at raising mental health awareness by launching
their "Real Meals" campaign in May 2019, complete with the tagline: "No one is happy all the time.
And that's OK."
While it's certainly true that no one is happy all the time, it's fair to say no one is looking
to Burger King for mental health advice, either.
The burger chain partnered with Mental Health America for the campaign, rolling out boxes
that looked rather similar to Happy Meals, only they were given names like the Blue Meal,
the Yaaas Meal, and the Salty Meal.
The campaign wasn't particularly well received.
"Some people will say, 'Hey, you know, Burger King doesn't belong in this conversation,
hey this is private.'"
Some mental health professionals praised Burger King for at least trying to be relatable,
while others condemned the ad and said it was nothing more than a cynical ploy to sell
more burgers.
Digital marketing professor Ari Lightman told CNBC,
"If the general public finds out that your actions don't coincide with your messaging,
then that can be potentially very damaging for a company."
Burger King's YouTube commercial for the campaign received mostly negative feedback, revealing
that a large portion of the public really wasn't buying into their Feel Your Way campaign.
The Real Meals may have been launched with good intentions, but they ended up being yet
another swing-and-miss for Burger King.
A burger for a penny is one hell of a deal, and it's certainly one way to grab the public's
attention.
Unfortunately, Burger King didn't take enough precautions when planning this particular
stunt, and quickly discovered that offering such a good deal won't necessarily go off
without a hitch.
"Burger King is trolling its fast food rival by selling its signature burger The Whopper
for just a penny but there is a catch."
The deal which was known as the "Whopper Detour" went a little something like this: People
who downloaded the Burger King mobile phone app were asked to visit their local McDonald's.
Once there, they would be prompted to unlock the deal, which offered up a Whopper for just
one little penny.
Customers would then be directed away from McDonald's and towards their waiting penny
Whopper at a nearby Burger King.
Pretty sneaky, right?
Well, Burger King relied a little too heavily on their brand-new app, and the deal didn't
quite work out as planned.
For example, when one Los Angeles customer named Boyce Harvey arrived at Burger King
to pick up his Whopper, the manager told him that his order was nowhere to be found.
So Harvey chose another order instead, but soon found out that he had bank overdraft
fees because Burger King had charged him a whopping $1,093.90.
That's a whole lot of pennies.
In short, it was a serious Whopper of a whoops, and it didn't make the fast food giant's newly
launched app look very reliable at all.
Not good.
The mid-2000s were certainly an interesting time for the fast food industry.
The American obesity rate was steadily going up, yet burger chains were seemingly competing
with one another to see who could put out the most unhealthy menu offering.
Spurred on by the success of Hardee's Monster Thickburger, Burger King tried to corner this
morbid market with a grossly oversized breakfast monstrosity to call its own.
The result was the gut-busting Enormous Omelet Sandwich.
"Now this gentleman clearly did not come correct for breakfast."
This gigantic breakfast sandwich was a bonafide feast of fear, loaded with a two-egg omelet,
two slices of cheese, three strips of bacon, and two sausage patties.
The result was an overstuffed sandwich that packed even more calories than the Whopper.
Although it was quite the calorie bomb — especially for a sandwich intended to be the first meal
of the day — Burger King execs seemed to think it was exactly what their customers
wanted.
Russ Klein, who was Burger King's chief marketing officer at the time, explained:
"[The sandwich is for] our guests who want a convenient and filling breakfast."
Well, that sandwich was immediately slammed by critics for being nothing more than a fatty
sodium bomb marketed as a hearty breakfast meal.
Penny Kris-Etherton, a professor of nutrition, told CNN:
"Americans do not need an Enormous Omelet Sandwich.
That's too many calories."
Meanwhile, Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock told USA Today that
"[Burger King's breakfast sandwich] should come with a $5-off coupon for your first angioplasty."
Reviews of the sandwich's overall taste were less than stellar, which should surprise absolutely
no one.
When it comes to advertising, it's not uncommon for a large brand to make a serious blunder
or two.
Burger King is arguably guilty of this, as the brand has rolled out several ads over
the years that some customers felt were culturally insensitive or even racist.
For example, Burger King New Zealand ran this ad in April 2019 to promote its Vietnamese
Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp Burger.
The Instagram ad was deemed "culturally insensitive" because it played into Asian stereotypes.
As you can see, the ad features customers struggling to use chopsticks to eat a burger
— and it was viewed about 2.7 million times before ultimately being taken down.
The ad was sharply criticized by some industry experts, who said the unfortunate spot could
be potentially damaging to Burger King and the chain's attempts to grow in Asia.
Consulting expert Brent McGoldrick told Time:
"When you flub something like this, you completely hurt your ability to drive any sort of interesting
or positive viral dialogue, and now it becomes almost all negative."
This was hardly the first time Burger King came under fire for being culturally tone-deaf.
Mary J. Blige reportedly called out the fast food chain for playing into African-American
stereotypes after she starred in a crispy chicken commercial.
"Let me tell you something.
It hurt my feelings.
It crushed me for like two days.
But after those two days, I got up and I kept going."
Accusations of cultural insensitivity are just the tip of the iceberg.
Burger King has also been called out for having sexist advertisements as well.
Oh, Burger King, when will you ever learn?
In 2009, Burger King's UK advertising department figured that they'd get more men buying the
Croissan'wich if they had a website dedicated to a woman in a bikini dancing and singing
in the shower.
Who knows how the pitch meeting actually went?
We imagine it involved lots of high-fives and caveman grunts.
Burger King tried to justify the campaign by saying that
"[Our research revealed] that breakfast is a male-centric audience for Burger King; it
doesn't resonate as well with women."
That same year, Burger King lowered the bar even further with an ad for their Super Seven
Incher sandwicher that ran in Singapore.
The advert featured a woman's open mouth with the ridiculously suggestive tagline: "It'll
blow your mind away."
Burger King was harshly criticized for the arguably sexist ad, which was promptly pulled
following numerous complaints to The Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore.
Even worse, the model in the advertisement said she was never made aware of how this
photo would be used.
Sleazy, right?
And to think that's just one of several questionable ad campaigns they've launched over the years.
How about this one?
"Wish your chicken was bigger?"
In 2009, Burger King rolled out its "Whopper Sacrifice" social media campaign.
"Meet Whopper Sacrifice.
Delete ten friends and receive a free Whopper."
The whole concept went like this: If a hungry Facebook user promptly dropped 10 of their
friends with Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice application, then they'd receive a coupon
for a free Whopper.
Meanwhile, those deleted friends got a notice that they'd been sold out for a burger.
The social media campaign was called everything from "obnoxious" and "puerile" to "hilarious"
and "brilliant."
One thing's for sure: It was an instant hit for Burger King and in a matter of days, 20,000
free Whopper coupons were earned by Facebook users.
Then Facebook pulled the plug on the promotion for good.
You see, Burger King had neglected to properly research Facebook's operations, and their
Whopper notification violated Facebook's user privacy agreements.
Matt Walsh of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the ad agency behind the concept, said.
"Some people thought it was a little brutal because we did send notifications.
If I defriended you, you would get a message saying that you were worth less than one-tenth
of a Whopper."
How's that for a little self-esteem boost?
Oh well.
No one is happy all the time.
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