Which brings us to the image (above) of a moldy hamburger. Believe it or not, this is Burger King's latest branding attempt.
"On Wednesday, the fast-food chain unveiled a new ad campaign featuring the transformation of the brand’s flagship sandwich over more than a month. But instead of showing a burger being built from the bottom up, it shows one growing moldy from the top down.
So why would Burger King let its beloved Whopper brave the elements to become something that isn’t even the least bit appetizing? To show what happens when a burger doesn’t use artificial ingredients, colors or flavors.
Fernando Machado, global chief marketing officer for Restaurant Brands International—Burger King’s parent company—told Forbes in an interview. “Right? Let’s show that because we don’t have preservatives from artificial sources, our product does decay. And let’s show that in a beautiful way. I think that is what works well here.”
I am not a marketing officer, I know nothing about branding. But there are some things you can't unsee. I predict that moldy whopper is not going to be the brand enhancer that Burger King is hoping for.
The Democratic Party is also attempting to "brand" itself. This article from US News is from 2019. But it is still current in terms of laying out the challenges Democrats face in their efforts to define the face of their party.
Democrats want the voters to see them as problem solvers, who are concerned about bread-and-butter issues. "...While anti-Trump sentiment surely drove some voters to the polls last year, Democrats are convinced it was issues like health care that won them 40 House seats – and the majority."
"Republicans have a different definition for Democrats – arguably one more base-pleasing and attention-getting. To hear some GOP lawmakers talk, Democrats are a bunch of socialist, anti-Semitic little Green men and women who want to ban planes and flatulent cows, take away your hamburgers, murder newborns and destroy President Donald Trump."
The challenge is for the Democratic party to control its own narrative; to emphasize the things they want to accomplish. And not to let the opposition brand them as the "moldy Whoppers".
Good time not to buy stock in Burger King's parent company. Truly nauseating ad campaign. Sort of the reverse of Twinkies, which reputedly had a shelf life of decades.
ReplyDeleteTwinkies...were how I likely earned the "bad mom of the year" title from my younger son's kindergarten teacher. Parents were supposed to sign up to bring snacks every day. I forgot my day. I got a distress call from the teacher. The nearest store was a convenience store. I frantically bought every Twinkie in the store and hurried them to school. The teacher frowned and said, "Well, we usually like the snacks to be fruits and vegetables to teach them about nutrition." But the kids loved them.
DeleteWhen I was a kid we only brought snacks for birthdays.
When I was a kid, Katherine, I would have voted you Mom of the Year for sending Twinkies! Much tastier than those execrable gummy fruit snacks.
DeleteYou know, I'd bet the dying burger sounded like a terrific idea to a bunch of creative people sitting around the table blue skying ideas. Too bad none of them thought to try it out on their mother before going national. This reminds me of "this is your brain on drugs" with the frying eggs back in the '80s. Produces the same kind of avoidance reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe Ds seem to be branding themselves as the people who say things their opponents will use against them in their ads this fall.
What would make a good middle school science project doesnt necessarily make a good ad campaign. The irony is that the only preservative likely to have been in the burger in the first place was calcium propionate in the bun. Which is harmless. I don't buy unpreserved bread in the summer.
DeleteI guess what the commercial is implying is that their bread is fresh and hasn't been sitting around for months. It would seem to me that a fast food restaurant wouldn't need preservatives anyway since everything is based on just-in-time flow of ingredients. And it's fast food anyway. Nobody is going to buy fast food to store for the apocalypse.
DeleteActually, the commercial has something very logical to say which makes it a bad commercial. Don't they first try this stuff out on groups of people with electrical probes attached to their scalps?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the same thought popped into everyone's head: the Spongebob Squarepants classic "Nasty Patty" episode.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vhl87
LOL! I hadn't seen that. Sponge Bob kind of falls in between my kids and the grandkids' ages
Delete"Democrats want the voters to see them as problem solvers, who are concerned about bread-and-butter issues."
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I don't see this. Istm that Democrats want the voters to see them as the agents of social, cultural and environmental transformation.
Maybe if they focused their brand more on problem solving it would be better received. Though to be fair they do at least as well as the Rs in that regard. At least that's my fallen-away and non-practicing Repub view.
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