Monday, December 8, 2008

I don't get it.


Burger King has this new ad campaign called the "Whopper Virgins" where they go to the remote corners of the world and conduct taste tests between the Whopper and the McDonald's Bic Mac. These are places like rural Romania, Thailand and Greenland, where there are no Burger Kings (or McDonalds). The gist of the commercial is that people who have never tasted either will be able to satisfy the controversy once and for all over who has the better burger.

It seems like there is a basic flaw in this thinking, though. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that one of these two burgers (okay, we'll go with the Whopper for now) gets more votes as the tastiest burger, and "wins" the taste test. What does that prove? Does that mean that back here in the United States if I happen to prefer the Big Mac that I am "wrong" and need to re-evaluate my own tastes?

What do we (fellow Americans) care what some third world country thinks about how burgers should taste? A lot of these places eat boiled dog meat and raw whale fat.

If the Whopper wins out, will Burger King start opening up fast food restaurants in those places? Is this some sort of intimidation technique to prevent McDonald's from moving forward with their top secret plans to open up burger joints on the frozen land mass of Greenland?

What does Burger King hope to prove with this? ...okay, I suppose they hope to prove that the Whopper tastes better than the Big Mac. But what does that prove? If the US Supreme Court established by law that the Whopper tasted better than the Big Mac, what would that even mean? That Big Mac lovers were somehow "wrong?" The only reason that this "experiment" would have any bearing is if there were actually a bunch of Burger King executives sitting around a board room trying to decide whether or not to open up restaurants in Romania. And, when you get right down to it, it actually wouldn't even have any logical bearing on that decision. If there really are no Burger Kings or McDonald's in Romania, who cares which tastes better? Whoever puts a store up first runs the monopoly! There is no competition at all.

Why am I taking the time to blog about this? Two reasons: 1) there is nothing better to blog about, and 2) I'm upset that during this period of personal unemployment Burger King is throwing money away on silly experiments instead of paying me to sit around on my ass (which would be just as productive, by the way).

Can you imagine how many millions of dollars Burger King is throwing into this thing? Come on, BK, throw some cash my way. For a minuscule fraction of what it's costing you to run this ad campaign you could pay my rent for a year (I still don't know where January's rent is coming from, by the way), buy me that new Vista laptop I want, and fly me out to Savannah to see my grandmother for Christmas! Now that's money well spent.

Let's hope something better to blog about comes up soon or this is gonna get really bad.

3 comments:

Nancy Lewis said...

Good point, Joe! Maybe you should start writing editorials for the paper. Oh wait - Melissa's paper just laid off a bunch of people. Forget it.

Melissa said...

Otherwise a fine idea, Nancy!

Joe, I must say that as long as Burger King stops running those creepy king commercials, I'm good with anything it puts out there.

joe said...

"They got a pepper bar!"