Posts Tagged: News

Advertising — 2 Comments
22
Dec 08

You Stole My Virginity! Can I have another Whopper?!

In terms of advertising and promotions Burger king has been using a lot of creativity compared to their competitors in the fast food industry. This included the viral site Subservient Chicken  and the creation of the “King”   in commericial campaigns  and even his own  series of successful video games . Going in a different direction the creative minds at Burger King have come up with another interesting idea, a documentary!

Titled the Whopper Virgins  a crew of researchers hired by Burger King  are tasked  with finding once and for all who has the better Burger ? Mcdonanlds or Burger King. This documentary created by ad firm Crispin, Porter and Bogusky  goes into remote villages of  Greenland ,Romania and Thailand places that have never seen a burger  where the term Whopper Virgins come in. Through comparative taste tests between the Whopper and Big Mac  from a taste test of these populations the researchers come to the conclusion that tasters preffered the Whopper.  

While some claim that the whole idea  offensive  or even exploitive,  I thought it was brilliant! Barring all the arguements that its intruding on these villagers, making light of hunger issues or  exposing them to potentially harmful North American culture( is a single burger so bad?)   it none the less sparked discussion and feelings about Burger King and its Whopper sandwhich,something that  every promotional campaign builds towards.

I’m sure this documentary won’t be seen by a large portion of the population  and it won’t create new markets in Greenland any time soon but  more importantly it  went on to instill ideas and has even sparked  discussion among consumers making it more likely that BK will stay in their  top of mind awareness . This is unlike general commercials from Mcdonalds and Wendy’s which may spur a quick hunger pang from the thought of all of that greasy goodness ( mmm burgers!) but will be forgotten within a few minutes of viewing like all the other commericials consumers are bombarded within a day. 

I’ve included the documentary below (its short!) check it out if you can: 

 

General Business / In the News — No Comments
20
Dec 08

British Bankster's: Not Sorry They F@#*ed Up Your Christmas!

I came across this sad bit of news while surfing the net ( check it out here) .The journalists at the London Sunday Express came across a video on Youtube from a group of British Bankers with a little Christmas carol of their own for the people of the UK to ‘enjoy’. Calling themselves the “City Bankers” they identify themselves as local bankers and  stock brokers with one claiming to have worked for the now defunct Lehman Brothers. 

This video follows the walk of a cartoon child describing the sad change in this years Christmas because of the financial meltdown. After a while of this, a group of obviously drunken bank workers go into chorus stating:

“Sorry we F@#*!ed up your Christmas, but really we don’t give a s#@t! Cause we have made loads of money, in fact we’re swimming in it” 

This video goes on to more creudness including a man urinating, overall not giving a ‘shit’ about  all the people that are suffering as a result of this financial meltdown.  The creators claim that this video came about because they were tired about people bugging and harassing them about this financial meltdown.

Although this isn’t linked to any one firm ,if this story grows legs this can potentially become a reputational problem that could turn into a customer relations firestorm. Any inaction in this case could cause problems for the UK banking industry as it then would be seen that  the opinion of this small group represents the general sentiment of the banks, something at this time  they obviously don’t want happening. Overall  I’m personally pretty disgusted with this video and don’t have much sympathy for these bank employees should they face consequences, I’ve embedded the video below to check out: