Loose Cannon: All That Meat and No Tomatoes

I’m going to give direct response marketing a rest this week. Brand advertising has more than its shares of foibles, and in the spirit of balance I offer the following, which vivisects one such campaign. A slightly different version of the following piece first appeared in CM Plus (www.chiefmarketer.com/cm_plus), Direct executive editor Beth Negus Viveiros’s excellent newsletter which covers the lighter side of marketing. The spot itself is available on the YouTube video sharing site I wrote about last week (www.youtube.com). Type “Manthem” into the search box and… enjoy?

In a scant six months, Burger King’s television commercials have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

The chain began the year with a Busby Berkeley-inspired ad that ran during the Super Bowl, in which dancers dressed as the components of a burger gracefully assembled themselves. By early summer its efforts had devolved into a campaign for the Texas Double Burger, in which the signature spot — titled “Manthem” — focused on the joys of humiliating women and gluttony. In doing so, it gets so caught up with its own daring — being a bully is a form of daring in today’s P.C. world, I guess — that it neatly avoids selling the benefits of the burger.

The Texas Double Burger commercial starts off in a restaurant, where a young man publicly dismisses chick food (much to the dismay of his female companion, who buries her face in her hand) and bursts into a parody of Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Just so the point isn’t lost, the minute-long spot features several instances of men pushing away from restaurant tables — and from their female companions.

The first young man’s companion is absolutely gorgeous, and one can’t help wonder if his overreaction to his meal is reflects certain inadequacies in other aspects of his relationship. Hey, fella, they’ve got pills for that — no need to embarrass the lady publicly.

Side note to the woman at the table: If this Neanderthal is, in fact, your husband, do not divorce him: take an insurance policy out on his ass, because a diet of these delicacies will have him in his grave by the time he’s 35. The Texas Double Whopper boasts two flame-broiled hamburger patties on a sesame seed bun with four strips of bacon, American cheese, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles and mayonnaise with jalapeños and mustard for a spicy kick. The Texas Double Whopper is a heart attack designed by committee.

The commercial continues by showing males liberating themselves from their watercress-sandwich lunches (and female companions) and being pulled into a human wave of burger-touting testosterone-laden storm troopers. They break bricks with their bare hands, flip cars and hang banners from buildings that read “I AM MAN” and “EAT THIS MEAT”. This isn’t a restaurant commercial: This is D.W. Griffith on a sesame seed bun.

And therein lies another problem. This is supposed to tout a new product, and yet viewers are given scant information regarding it. (I cribbed the above description from an online source.) There is one two-second product close-up, and another hint at its contents in the song lyric, but the thrust of the ad focused on how hungry these misanthropes are.

It is possible to make lunkheadedness work: Look at the “Real Men of Genius” campaign for Budweiser, which has been giving the Clydesdales a run for their money for several years. The difference is that this campaign gently mocks men’s idiocies — and we’ve got many — while building the brand. Does it awake a craving for a Bud? Not in me, but at least I don’t come away from it with antipathy for the product.

There’s a story — it’s too good to be investigated for veracity, so take it as apocryphal — about Bruce Feirstein, who wrote the 1982 book “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche.” According to legend, the somewhat smallish-stature Feirstein was accosted at a book party by authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, both of whom are fairly substantial individuals.

As legend has it, Niven and Pournelle sidled up to Feirstein and informed him in low, menacing growls “Real men eat whatever they damned well please.”

Right on, boys. And I’ll bet they don’t walk out on women at restaurants, either.

Regrettably, the Texas Double Whopper, which is a menu staple in Texas, was available only on a limited basis nationwide. It is hard to know what killed this limited time offer — was it the poorly executed ad campaign, or the fact that, at 1050 calories (620 from fat), 69 grams of total fat, 26 grams of saturated fat, 2.5 grams of trans fat, 210 milligrams of cholesterol, 1910 milligrams of sodium, and 54 grams of carbs, most of those consumers who tried the Texas Double Whopper with cheese are doubtless now grazing in the Great Salad Bar in the Sky?

But be of good heart, folks: The chain is currently touting its triple Whopper, which boasts 1230 calories, 740 from fat.

I hear it comes with a toy defibrillator.

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