burger king is getting stranger with the stranger king sweepstakes the drive to knock out the
competition has pushed bk's marketing efforts to the limit here's a taste of burger king's
10 most controversial ads of all time you've come a long way burger mama can you make me a sandwich
of course sweetheart do you want it in triangles women have come a long way it might come as a
surprise to the advertising department at burger king but among other things women have had the
right to vote in america for a century maybe burger king's dubious attempted humor with a
sociological rant wouldn't have fallen so flat a hundred years ago but this is the 21st century
just in case burger king needs to be reminded it's ironic that the trouble started when burger king
in the united kingdom attempted to promote a scholarship designed to help more women go
to cooking schools to support this worthy cause the fast food chain tweeted women belong in the
kitchen if he wants a sandwich you make daddy a sandwich a joke is a joke but you can always
count on a certain number of people to refuse to get the joke burger king was forced to retract the
tweet and apologize for offending people if the point of burger king's ad was to get attention
then the burger chain succeeded in that beyond its wildest expectations chocolate or poop what
is this all over you is that chocolate or poop is that chocolate or poop is that chocolate or
poop this is probably the most memorable line from the 2008 movie baby mama comedy sometimes have to
go low but you'd think a giant corporation that sells food to people would have a rule against
even saying the word poop apparently this isn't the case because the fast food chain decided to
make an ad that drew attention to this most unappetizing form of body waste burger king
in brazil decided to roll the dice and go there as part of its ad campaign to promote a natural
ingredient only menu what if that had been poop for some reason a poop emoji was chosen as the
mascot the emoji is supposed to represent burger king's all-natural chocolate soft-serve dessert
the soft serve might be good but a poop-shaped mascot seems like an indefensible choice
except of course if the aim was to generate as much publicity as possible
then the ad might have been just what the fast food chain was looking for customers gave the
ad mixed reviews but it got a lot of attention and even won an award in brazil while becoming
one of burger king's most controversial ads of all time creepy the king be afraid
be very free mcdonald's is burger king's main competition and the chain with the golden arches
won the mascot sweepstakes a long time ago with the introduction of ronald mcdonald the friendly
clown is a cheerful child-friendly favorite although burger king's king appeared before ronald
burger king cemented its second fiddle status with the sneak king probably because burger king is so
jealous of ronald mcdonald the burger chain decided to stick it to him on halloween 2017.
participating burger king locations decided to offer free whoppers to customers dressed as
creepy clowns i want my woven the creepy clown phenomenon was a thing a few years ago and the
burger king marketing team thought it would be a good idea to take a jab at people's anxieties
as weird as this marketing scheme was it wasn't the weirdest creepy clown marketing
campaign by the burger chain a burger king in sweden took the creepiness to the next level
when it encouraged customers to repeat the phrase cancelled clown three times this spell would cause
the lights to dim and a ghostly image of ronald mcdonald to appear in the mirror this seems like
a fairly elaborate way to stick it to ronald mcdonald again but does creepy sell burgers
only bk knows for sure chinese food chinese food no soul food here in 2019 burger king outlets
in new zealand got into trouble with the chinese community the chain decided to pull a video that
showed new zealanders trying to eat the vietnamese sweet chili tender crisp burger with oversized
chopsticks it might not be exactly clear what the chinese found so objectionable about the ad
but jokes don't always translate well did they really believe burger king was disparaging chinese
culture regardless of the specific reason that had people upset their reaction was swift and fierce
please the chinese community on social media demanded an apology from the fast food chain
and they got one without much of a fight burger king headquarters were dismayed by the negative
publicity and insisted that the stores in new zealand take down the ad when the ad
was released burger king had 1 000 locations in china so the fast food chain felt it had to move
quickly to protect its investment the fast food chain got even more publicity than it banked on
but this is the risk bk takes in its ongoing struggle to separate itself from its competition
obviously there's a prominent place for humor in advertising but when a company like burger
king flirts with ethnic and cultural issues it should know it's setting itself up for trouble
brexit king can i interest you in a whopper you can get it to go if you want to eat it in your car
and cry burger king got itself into hot water when it got involved in the political turmoil
surrounding the united kingdom's brexit campaign to withdraw from the european union during this
period the uk was saturated with political ads for and against brexit billboards with campaign
slogans on city buses were a fact of life and this is where burger king comes in the fast
food chain decided to take out ads on buses that read another whopper on the side of a bus must be
an election this might be a clever way to sell hamburgers and the ads certainly did get a lot
of attention the problem was it wasn't the kind of attention the fast food chain was hoping for
sorry chica we are food real people burger king also seemed to be encouraging a risky
phenomenon called milkshaking this was a practice seen during the brexit campaign
people threw milkshakes at government officials if they didn't like their politics many observers in
britain believe burger king should have thought twice before injecting itself into perhaps the
country's most consequential political debate of the last 50 years it seems clear this ad campaign
bit off more than the fast food chain could chew and was certainly controversial to the stars
burger king isn't concerned with the stars in the sky or even the stars in hollywood however
the fast food chain became concerned with earning some michelin stars at least that was what one of
its ads would have you believe in 2020 the ceo of burger king in belgium launched a petition to try
to get the fast food chain recognized by the famed michelin guide even earning one star from michelin
is a coveted achievement that any restaurant would be happy to get these stars are usually only given
to the very best restaurants so it's likely the petition was really more of a publicity stunt
than a serious attempt to get the fast food chain recognized by the guide because the food here is
made with too much fat and too much salt and too many cheap cuts of meat what made burger king
think it could actually earn a star the answer it gave was the introduction of burger king's
master angus burger this was billed as a premium sandwich that boasted an angus beef patty creamy
sauce mustard crispy onions tomatoes and arugula this sounds like a delicious burger but it's hard
to believe anyone at the chain really thought they were going to get a michelin star a friend indeed
hey don't look at me you're the one that wanted to come up here and look for some stupid burger
king comment most people on facebook want as many friends on the social media platform as they can
get or at least more than their actual friends have this is what made burger king's attempt to
manipulate customers into jettisoning friends from their accounts so deliciously diabolical the fast
food chain made an offer that was simple delete 10 friends from your facebook account and earn
yourself a free hamburger you couldn't do this without everyone knowing because your deed would
show up in your news feed for everyone to see i see you the 2009 ad was dubbed the whopper
sacrifice but if you went along with this sort of manipulation for a burger you might have already
sacrificed your common sense according to facebook it only took a few days for about two hundred
friends to be deleted from people's accounts in favor of burger king whoppers even facebook
decided that this campaign was a problem the tech giant waded in on the whopper sacrifice
controversy and disabled the app the it guys can write any code they want but there's no app to
repair a disabled relationship want some mold with that just a sandwich it is not just a sandwich
i want him whacked mold is something we usually want to avoid whether we're cooking at home or
eating at our favorite fast food restaurant many people were caught off guard in 2020 when burger
king launched an ad campaign about dropping additives and preservatives from its menu
people weren't that surprised about burger king's commitment to using healthier ingredients
so much as they were with the vivid images of its burgers decaying into heaps of mold
a lot of people were surprised when the reaction on social media was fairly favorable toward the
unconventional and unappetizing ads run king run conventional fast food ads usually do their best
to portray the food they're trying to sell in the best possible light this seems like advertising
101 and this is why the thought of using moldy images of food as the basis of a campaign strikes
many people as counterproductive and controversial some people thought the ad wasn't controversial at
all because food really does spoil the decision to go ahead with the moldy campaign despite the
pitfalls is part of the reason this is one of burger king's most controversial ads of all time
super seven incher i still have dreams about this burger beautiful haunting dreams one of the most
controversial ads was launched in singapore in 2009 to promote burger king's super 7-incher
obviously the name alone was fraught with problems and the lines written for the campaign proved to
be too hot for the fast food chain to handle maybe burger king didn't appreciate that a lot
of parents with children like to eat whoppers but they might not like their children being exposed
to the controversial ads the campaign featured lines like it'll blow your mind away fill your
desire for something long juicy and flame grilled with the new bk super 7 incher it isn't hard to
figure out why this bk ad took some heat the ad immediately received a lot of pushback and
burger king came to its senses and dropped the ad after a short run don't say it don't you say left
come on the advertising game is known for being pretty hardcore it's about getting results but the
people behind this ad must have known they were asking for trouble this is often the point because
even though burger king quickly pulled the ad the chain got what it wanted publicity the lascivious
nature of the ad made a lot of people take notice of burger king's super 7 incher and that was the
point all along it's no secret that sex sells and it seems like the fast food chain was more than
willing to use it in order to sell more burgers really new satisfries from burger king burger king
has a history of poking fun at its top competitor and in 2019 it decided to take aim at the beloved
happy meal what could go wrong the fast food chain decided to use mental health awareness month to
launch an ad campaign that simultaneously tweaked one of mcdonald's iconic menu items and seemingly
made light of mental health the people behind the ad might argue they were trying to draw attention
to the seriousness of mental health issues with a dose of humor even if this is true it still seems
like a questionable way to sell fast food are you satisfied maybe burger king thought it was
being helpful when it framed the campaign with the line no one is happy all the time and that's okay
the payoff came in the form of five variations of what the chain called
the real meal you could choose from the blue meal the salty meal the pissed meal the yass meal and
the dgaf meal the backlash came quickly as people tweeted mockingly about the dangers of being too
salty and the like regardless of what burger king might have against happy meals most people
would probably agree this ad was very close to crossing a line we've got more just tap or click
on another video first time here then hit that subscribe button and ring that notification bell