|| Recently, McDonald's arch-nemesis, Burger King, came under fire for igniting a huge Twitter controversy by taking a seemingly sexist take on women for their latest campaign "H.E.R"||
Imagine being a brand famous for delicious grilled patties, it hurts differently when you get roasted on social media. This is exactly what happened with Burger King.
Recently, Burger King’s UK division shared this tweet with their mass following to launch their new scholarship called H.E.R (Helping Equalize Restaurants), to promote women employees in getting a culinary degree, as they mentioned the fact that in the restaurant industry, the female head chef occupancy is less than 7%. Hence, the initiative was launched to promote more women to pursue a career in culinary arts.
But what was the whole controversy about?
Burger King initially did a print media campaign, presented as on the back of a newspaper with a giant headline that read Women belong in the kitchen, followed by the explanation of the launch of their new scholarship program. They represented the headline here as a satirical take on the sexist phrase, dating its origins too far back in time. The print campaign didn’t grab enough critical eyeballs because of the immediate provision of the context.
However, things took a wild turn when the burger connoisseur applied the same marketing technique on Twitter. Burger King uploaded the same copy and turned it into a series of tweets (because of the character limitation on the social media platform), making it a thread.
But what they didn’t realize is the fact that statements made on social media can very easily be taken out of context, if the information is not provided in time. Thus, as the UK branch of Burger King posted the above tweet, they were bombarded with hate and critical tweets almost instantaneously! The general public read the tweet as a sexist take on women and due to the lack of context, the brand’s image began to get tarnished.
The campaign ran on International Women’s Day, which was an intelligent move to promote scholarship for women, but the efforts to sound smart, the brand took a risky bet and it backfired.
Here's a look at some of those tweets: -
The campaign attracted some praise as well, but sadly, it got outnumbered.
Why the people were so furious?
Okay we get it, the “Clickbaity” tactic used by the brand was a tad too distasteful, and in a way to attract an audience, they ended up grabbing the right attention but for all the wrong reasons.
But moments after this controversy, people started digging out some dirt and found that Burger King sort of holds a poor reputation for taking a firm stance favoring gender equality.
In March 2018, Burger King announced that they’ll be offering a lifetime supply of Whoppers to Russian women. Sounds like a steal? Here’s the catch. The offer applied to only those women who got pregnant with the world cup players. Yes, you read that right!
Apparently, the campaign was supposed to promote the world cup and somehow it became something else entirely.
After this huge marketing blunder, the brand immediately apologized and took down the campaign, but the ghosts of our past always haunt us, don’t they?
My 2 Cents
Burger King took down the tweet minutes later after spurring the Twitter feud and apologized for it but their attempt at a cheeky marketing campaign gave us a practical example of how “Not all publicity is good publicity”. However, a slightly smarter approach to this campaign could’ve had a much bigger and positive impact on their audience.
Here's my example of their campaign: -
Here I have changed the headline and separated the term “Men”, smartly transforming the age-old sexist comment into a more progressive one, by emphasizing the fact that both men and women equally belong in the kitchen.
I used Burger King’s identical font and picture and did some photoshop magic to transform their same campaign and made it much better. The basic theme of the idea has not changed and yet the brand can now promote its culinary scholarship for women without getting roasted much. Even though the idea of using this statement is still not that good, but turning it around smartly is what the brand should’ve done.
Hence proved, sometimes bad publicity is actually bad for the brand.