Burger King Goes Insane

8 Comments

1. 
   Comment by Dave Perkins:
   Thursday, December 18th 2008 at 9:46 pm | 

   Smells of desperation to me.
2. 
   Comment by Cindy C.:
   Thursday, December 18th 2008 at 9:53 pm | 

   I think I understood McDonald’s selling cameras better than this. But you’re probably right about the insanity being the point. Still…if something makes you talk about, but not buy, how effective is that as a marketing philosophy?

   • 
     Comment by James Dickey:
     Thursday, December 18th 2008 at 10:37 pm | 

     Exactly. I don’t subscribe to the “any publicity is good publicity” school of thought.

     The Taco Bell chihuahua commercials are a good example – very memorable and widely discussed, but they didn’t increase sales at the chain. We may have the same thing here, or we may not. The proof is in the results.

     I still contend that deception, even if intended as an “inside joke” is not any way to build long-term brand strength.
3. 
   Comment by Chad (@poweredbysteam):
   Thursday, December 18th 2008 at 10:43 pm | 

   I’m actually going to disagree. (Maybe they just nailed me as their target demographic, though…haha)

   Here’s the thing about the fast food market. They’ve been fighting for decades. Short of one of them poisoning their customers, neither one has any more dirt/comparisons/anecdotes to fight their competition with. Fast food is WAY too ubiquitous in our society for advertising based on quality quibbles to get any hint of attention. McDonald’s is trying to go healthier, it seems, and I think that premise fails worse than I think that you believe the BK stuff does. (but that’s a different long rant hahaha)

   Think about it. Would you have cared at all if Burger King came out with a commercial that said their burgers taste better than McDonald’s, or Hardees, to be fair? No, of course not. See, I agree with you here. This is entirely a ploy. And it is extremely far removed from reality. But that’s the whole point. Burger perfume? Utterly ridiculous. And that’s why they did it. There are several other companies employing this exact same principle. Jones soda has an annual tradition at Thanksgiving of coming out with gravy, or squash, stuffing, several similar concepts of just totally gross beverage flavours. But you buy them and you drink them *because* they’re gross. Because it’s a fun *experience* to share. It’s the same thing with the Harry Potter jelly beans. Are they ‘dishonestly interacting’ with their consumers by having grass flavoured beans that aren’t based in the sweet/fruit realm? No, they are creating an experience around the bizarre flavours they offer. I applaud the fact that they’ve given up trying to sell me their burgers, and have just started going completely crazy and having a lot of fun with their advertising.

   Getting really broad here, I think that this is one downside to the whole social media movement. A lot of people are talking this way, so it’s not personal, but I think everyone’s so caught up in the public face/customer service stuff, that we forget that there are other components that do indeed help to make up the brand. If Apple fired their entire customer service team tomorrow, for example, there would still be Mac zealots. Why? Because they’ve branded their products as an experience and as a culture, neither of these having anything to do with customer service.

   I guess I don’t get the dishonest interaction notion, here, and that’s my major disagreement with your argument. Getting people talking is precisely what this idea was intended to do. But I don’t understand how getting people talking could be construed as pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes….
4. 
   Comment by Hoechstetter Interiors:
   Friday, December 19th 2008 at 12:54 am | 

   Words fail me… *I* certainly don’t want to smell like charbroiled beef.

   OTOH, Chad does have a point.

   Wendy
5. 
   Comment by Dana:
   Tuesday, December 23rd 2008 at 1:23 pm | 

   I think BK is trying to reach a market it doesn’t understand and has been for years. Way back when I worked there they started to remold themselves to reach the teen market and most of it was just dumb. And that king guy has issues. The website made me laugh but the king is anything but seductive and makes me desire about anything but him or his hamburgers.

   From the number of people I’ve heard respond with “Oh my goodness I’m never buying anything from BK again” I’d say it may not do well for them. But who knows. That usually only lasts until the next time you are out and need a snack and nowhere else to go.

   But personally, I think fast food does better marketing to children. Parents don’t care all that much and go where their children want to go for the most part. Maybe they have just ceded that market to McDonald’s?
6. 
   Comment by Marte:
   Wednesday, December 24th 2008 at 12:51 am | 

   I seldom look at the TV so I missed this commercial. Is it true? They’re really selling perfume that smells like char-broiled burgers?

   Y’know, it just might sell. Partially for the novelty of it as Chad mentioned, but also because “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

   There must be a million jokes about women who could prance naked in front of the TV without their husbands even noticing they’re there. So the women married to that kind of man might, in desperation, buy a perfume that would at least get him to look up in search of the burger.
7. 
   Comment by Stephen Rothman:
   Saturday, January 3rd 2009 at 2:09 pm | 

   Pretty funny. The only people to whom I can imagine Flame appealing are adolescents and young men (or older guys with that level of maturity). Isn’t this the segment that BK has been targeting? If so, I suspect it is a PR ploy to generate WOM among that target. Otherwise, it will just be us crazy marketing folks who spend time talking about goofy stuff like this. I doubt the main motivation is to actually to sell the spray, but rather just to get their target consumers talking about it, and thus BK.

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