Kansas City Blog

Burger King meets "Borat"! Not tasty at all ...

I don't understand. You haven't made a case for why the Whopper Virgin promotion is wrong or pushing the envelope.

Is it stereotypes? You haven't established that any stereotypes were embraced by BK. In fact, you only can only assert that Burger King "isn't going to hold back when it comes to cultural stereotypes" because the picture of the Romanian woman, whom you call "a peasant," looks like she came straight out of Hollywood. Isn't that assertion a little culturally insensitive?

Do you feel that the indigenous people were being taken advantage of? You didn't make that case either.

Lastly, have you worked at VML?

Hi.

You should check the Romanian blogosphere and you will see a lot of persons disgusted by BKs action. Some persons found out this was a terribly false campaign, filmed in a different location than the one they presented, with costumes from other area of the country and some other "small" details. I hope they will not use stereotypes from now on. They won't penetrate (pun intended) the Romanian market with this type of advertising.

Btw, is the hamburger a "traditional" American food?:)

This is plain "BS". Romania might not best country in the world, and it might have been pretty bad during the communist time, but it is way different now. I do not know if they have to ask for certain rights for mentioning the country's name, but these ads are just wrong. I am sure there is a fat/rich guy drinking beer in the Bahamas from the money he made from letting them project this image of Romania. Even though many people are offended by it, no does something about it; what can we do? I think this should be a matter of bigger importance to a national level, and not just an internet debate. We vote for a government to represent us and this is what we get. There are so many people that have business connected to tourism; all the international affairs are affected by this, made not too much, but it got to be a habit. First the Borat Movie, then Folger, now Burger King. What comes next? Romanians are spread all over the world, but pride can their be in telling people where you are from, when they see poverty and lack of knowledge in these ads. The problem is not in shooting ads in Romania, or have showing the conditions of the places there, it is more of projecting the right idea. They can make whatever they want to with the ad, they could have made it look good and everyone would have been happy, but now they risk having a lot of criticism. Maybe it does not affect the people Romanian people that do not travel outside the country, but it sure has an impact on the people that live outside. I, myself, live in the US, and I had people come up to me and ask me what the country is like. All they know about it is the poverty, and that we have many orphans. As the Orphan's Agencies do a good job finding international support, they enhance the bad image of Romania. I am not saying that they should stop doing that or that it is wrong, my point is that we need other agencies in any domain to enhance the good things in Romania. That way there would be a balance.

So very, very unbelievably offensive!

Another idiotic, even bizarre piece of BK advertising:
Not normally a BK customer, just drove through to get a soda; on the side of the cup:

"Science hasn't proven it yet, but we're pretty sure your cup tries to communicate with you. Like by using that sound created while sucking through a straw at the bottom of any empty drink. It's called Cup Chatter. And it's your cup's way of telling you to get a refill. So the next time you hear it, listen up and top that puppy off. Because it's good to have it filled to the edge. it shows you're really having it your way".

I'm from Romania and I find this campaign misleading. At one point they imply that they don't even know how to eat the burger, and show the romanian woman kinda confused, thinking about how to eat it. She's acting like this because this is supposed to be a formal tasting, and she's expecting to have to eat it in a more formal way (with a knife and a fork). The translator then says "just use your hands" at which point she looks relieved and grabs it like you would any sandwich (albeit perhaps with a bit of stage fright). And while it's true that BK only recently came to Romania (so most of us are Whopper Virgins), we have had McDonalds for quite a few years now. Oh, and from my experience, the peasants that make it to the big cities go for KFC anyway :P. But, despite this campaign, I'm sure BK will have huge success here, since we love eating fast-food, and we love trying new things.