[Re: Loose Cannon: All That Meat and No Tomatoes, Direct Newsline, August 7, 2006 directmag.com/loosecannon/loose-cannon-all-meat-no-tomatoes-080706/]:
I have a blog (who doesn’t these days) that the public religiously avoids reading, but on May 26th I commented on the “evolutionary set-back” that Burger King was delivering to mankind. I think that the best that Burger King has been able to do is move from “sub-slime” to the ridiculous and back again. They have been so out of touch with reality that the best they can do is offend the (in comparison) highly refined tastes of the general public.
It seems that agencies in general are reducing themselves to only reaching and appealing to the lowest common denominator. Their contempt for mankind shows in the ads they produce for their clients. One can only assume that the agencies involved are reflecting the attitudes of their clients. If that’s the case, “God bless us one and all.”
Here is what I said then:
Burger King has lost its way and now is promoting men as “dumb as dirt,” mindless thugs who have to prove their manliness in any way possible. Of course, everyone sings in this commercial (the current styling a favorite of ad makers) about the “Texas Whopper” and how it satisfies a real man. These “real men” leave their girls in a fancy restaurant to go to a Burger King. Hold burgers up to the heavens in praise of this latest sandwich. They also punch other men in the gut, smash cement blocks with their hands, and dump a mini van off an overpass into the back of a major dump truck being pulled by a Neanderthal who has a new “Whopper” being held in front of him, just out of reach.
If this is the way Burger King sees men, I say, “Men, are we going to take that? Are we going to let these mindless jerks portray our gender as nothing more than testosterone poisoned meat heads?” “No!” I say. Boycott Burger King until they run commercials a normal person can watch and not be annoyed or insulted by.
I will say that this commercial is heads above being creeped-out by a cheesy plastic headed king sitting in a guy’s bed and waking him up to give him a breakfast sandwich. The king also played football and other manly (I guess) things. What kind of messages are they trying to send?
This is a perfect example of how off-the-wall agencies are going to make “memorable” ads. They are missing the point and at the same time taking their clients for a money-wasting trip down their profitable (for the agencies) garden path.
(ref. www.saxonmarketing.com/blog/archive/2006_05_01_cfh_archive.html )
Albert Saxon
Saxon Marketing
Indian Orchard, MA
Network
