Burger King’s latest misstep is totally on-brand
Lacking a meaningful identity and position of their own, Burger King long ago staked out their role as the king of the substitute QSR brands by drafting off the category leader McDonald’s and committing to a strategy of regular promotional gimmicks and periodic rebrands to stay top of mind with consumers.
While it has generally served them well enough, a problem with this strategy is that without a differentiated brand to align their marketing tactics around, they can rely too much on the whims of their latest marketing agency of record who, eager to at least get garner some industry buzz before being replaced, try to blaze new trails but just end up in the creative wilderness.
The latest case in point is this “Pride Whopper” , a promotion in Austria that recently created an uproar on social media.
My favorite brand missteps are self-inflicted ones- of which Burger King provides plenty- see the Moldy Whopper or the Hidden Big Mac as two examples. I enjoy them not just because of the schadenfreude of watching fail videos on Instagram or TikTok…it’s more the absurdity that such a big established global company with resources and smart talented experience people running it and plenty to lose can still manage to develop and sign off on a strategy like this.
Then again as I’ve written before I think Burger King intentionally positions themselves as a substitute brand and rather than having a differentiated value proposition, consistently relies on advertising gimmicks to maintain brand awareness. So perhaps what I am calling missteps are completely intentional? It would be on-brand, I suppose.
Maybe we should at least take it as a sign of social progress that fast-food brands are rainbow-washing.
