December 4, 2008, - 11:31 am
Dumbest PC Outrage of the Day: I’m a Lifelong “Whopper Virgin”
By Debbie Schlussel
Are you a “Whopper virgin”? Since I keep kosher, I am, and–it’s safe to say–I will die a Whopper virgin.
And while I’m not offended with this moniker, liberals are upset about Burger King’s new series of “Whopper Virgin” ads, featuring Thai Hmongs, Transylvanian farmers in Romania, Inuit tribes in Iceland, and other indigenous peoples in far-flung locales around the world.
In the humorous ads, which debut Sunday evening on TV and at WhopperVirgins.com, these various remote ethnicities were asked to taste test the Whopper versus the Big Mac. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that, since the ads are produced by BK, these native peoples didn’t pick the Big Mac.
But humorless liberals, who can’t take a joke and for whom everything is offensive, are incensed, claiming the ads–which they have yet to see–are “tasteless and potentially exploitative.”
Here are the preview ads. Judge for yourself. They look harmless to me:
Based on these preview videos, I think the ads look clever and are going to be funny and entertaining. These forever-annoyed liberals and PC-police will be howling at the wind.
But some Hmong activists claim that they are being looked at as backwards in the ads, as if they never had a burger. That’s ridiculous. They went to places where people, in fact, never had a burger, much less a Whopper or Big Mac. I wonder what the Hmong–there are many Hmong immigrants in Wisconsin and I worked to help the Hmong poor there, when I was in grad school–will say about “Gran Torino,” where some of them are portrayed in an even less flattering light (though others are portrayed positively).
And then there are the others–liberals who feel we must respect and bow down to the Third World, and other Hmong activists who actually liked the ads:
How do you market burgers after you’ve tried everything else? Taste tests in Transylvania.
Next week, Burger King kicks off a major ad campaign that involves a unique twist on the tried-and-true marketing technique of taste testing. The campaign is already generating controversy.
The No. 2 burger maker in the U.S. asked farmers in the Transylvania region of Romania, the Hmong tribe of Thailand, and other folks in far-flung places to sample its Whopper alongside McDonald’s Big Mac and declare the winner.
One ad, set to begin airing Monday, features images of villagers in traditional garb choosing the Whopper over the Big Mac. A Transylvanian woman, an Inuit tribesman from the Icelandic tundra and others point and, in their native tongues, declare their preference for Burger King’s flagship product.
“We traveled to find the most isolated people in the world…the world’s purest taste test,” a voiceover says.
Burger King says it was trying to find “Whopper Virgins,” which is also the name of its campaign. “We wanted to see how the Whopper would perform in a world that didn’t have ad or marketing awareness or any sentimental attachments” to either brand, says Russ Klein, president of global marketing, strategy and innovation at Burger King Holdings.
But it didn’t take long for the campaign to get flame-broiled by controversy. Teaser ads, which started running earlier this week to help build excitement for the campaign by showing snippets from the experiment, have been criticized by bloggers and pundits as tasteless and potentially exploitative.
A headline on the blog Stereohyped read: “Burger King Storms Innocent Villages to Plunder ‘Virgins.’ ”
Another blogger, on Walletpop, wrote: “What might irk people is the concept that Burger King is taking its fat-laden fast food to people who aren’t used to this stuff in their diets, who aren’t usually subject to our crass commercials, and who probably don’t really care too much.”
Alan Siegel, chairman of Siegel + Gale, an Omnicom Group branding firm, warns that the ads “could be interpreted as the crass part of America talking to the Third World.” . . .
Lo Neng Kiatoukaysy of the nonprofit Hmong American Friendship Association, in Milwaukee, said she and a small group of Hmong she works with viewed and liked the teaser ads.
To Alan Siegel and the others, I say, PUH-LEEEZE. “The crass part of America talking to the Third World”?! Go tell it to your ACLU support group. Sounds like Siegel’s a little jealous that Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad agency produced these ads that are destined to be a hit . . . and not his agency.
Sounds like the libs are taking BK serious when they are told to “Have It Your Way!”
Jimmy Lewis
SCS, Michigan
Blog: http://rougerevival.blogspot.com/
Jimmy on December 4, 2008 at 1:27 pm