When Burger King decided to run a campaign called "Whopper Virgins," with the premise of doing a Whopper versus Big Mac taste test in rural international outposts, you can imagine what they were thinking: Controversy!
People will love it! People will hate it! People will debate it incessantly! It’ll be great!
Perhaps they should have found a way to make a little more interesting.
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| Burger King (click image for ad) |
The ads feature people who live in such rural areas of the world that they have ostensibly never tried, or perhaps even heard of, a burger. After apparently being told to dress in their fanciest traditional outfits, they are trooped into a bland room and handed two burgers.
The results are exceeding awkward.
Footage on the company’s Web site shows the testers unsure how to eat the burger and yet keen not to be impolite. In the television ads, the subjects are seen taking huge bites of the sandwiches, but their responses appear muted: They point at the one they like and briefly confirm their choice.
If they had anything compelling to say about the experience of eating their first burger, you don’t see it in the spots. There’s certainly no evidence that they were converted to a life of fast food and are seeking franchise opportunities.
The online movie offers a little more insight, including one man admitting he prefers seal meat and a few people choosing the Big Mac, saying they have no preference or refusing to try a burger at all. But if there was an "a-ha" moment among the testers, we don’t see it.
Mostly, the ads and the online video come off as a Herculean effort to make something dramatic out of encounters that appear, at best, stilted. When the video reaches the point that they are discussing propane outlets extensively, you really get the sense that they are stretching for drama.
Also, while the company’s self-congratulatory press materials paint the experiment as an example of honesty and transparency, they don’t reveal the most basic piece of information: definitive results of their taste tests, such as how many people tried the burgers and the number of people who preferred each one.
The lack of concrete data raises the question of whether, overall, the Whopper was the favorite, or whether they just choose to feature the anecdotal stories of those that preferred the Whopper.
A few more facts – now that might have been interesting.
Click here to see the ad, or click here to watch the online video.
