Burger Kings raises the stakes in the burger war with Whopper Virgins campaign

[Food Network Fan]

Burger Kings raises the stakes in the burger war with Whopper Virgins campaign

Beth Pinsker
Dec 1st 2008 at 2:30PM
Filed under: Shopping, Travel
A few weeks ago, when Motrin ran a campaign for its pain reliever that riffed on the practice of babywearing -- insinuating that carrying your baby in a sling can lead to back pain -- moms rebelled and Motrin pulled the ad. Is another ad gone bad about to come soon to a TV near you? This one will be courtesy of Burger King, which is teasing a new campaign called "Whopper Vigins" with a short documentary that has people in remote areas of the world taste-testing Whoppers and Big Macs. Given that Burger King sponsored the travels of the crew, who do you think wins?
MORE HERE

[ping]

I saw one of those commercials last night. They were getting some Transylvania farmers to do a taste test between the whopper and the big mac.

[Pluff Mudder]

Burger King's 'Whopper Virgins' Documentary Takes Whoppers to Remote Places
Posted by Robyn Lee, December 2, 2008 at 2:15 PM

Burger King's latest campaign, Whopper Virgins (by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky) aims to determine the winner in the Whopper vs. Big Mac battle by taking both burgers to remote places around the world—such as areas in Thailand, Romania, and Greenland—and conducting tastes tests with people who don't "even have a word for burger."

Backlash against the Whopper Virgins documentary is pervasive. In The Daily News, Marilyn Borchardt, development director for Food First, calls the campaign "insensitive" and points out, "The ad's not even acknowledging that there's even hunger in any of these places." Dunca Riley of the Inquisitr also finds the campaign offensive, while Brian Morrissey of AdFreaks says it's "embarrassing and emblematic of how ignorant Americans still seem to the rest of the world."

Watch some teaser clips of the documentary, after the jump.


Burger King's 'Whopper Virgins' Documentary Takes Whoppers to Remote Places | A Hamburger Today

[ping]

I think some people just take things way to serious.

[BerryBaby]

We had posted this challenge months and months ago! I had said that I had never had a Whopper before and we all challenged each other to try the Big Mac and a Whopper.

Old news to us....wonder if they got the idea here????

[ping]

We had posted this challenge months and months ago! I had said that I had never had a Whopper before and we all challenged each other to try the Big Mac and a Whopper.

Old news to us....wonder if they got the idea here????

Which burger won?

[tuthead]

The funniest thing from this type of situation tends to be the reaches from some of the "offended" peoples. Here is my favorite so far:

"What's next? Are we going to start taking guns out to some of these remote places and ask them which one they like better?"

I would imagine that people out in the "remote places" would probably rather have a gun to kill even more food in the future than just the two burgers they got for the taste test. And these are from the same ad agency that did the fake Whopper Freakout campaign, so I would bet that there were more poor, happy to be working actors than poor, remote native people involved in the filming of this ad.

[BerryBaby]

Ping, neither one really. I think I was the only one that tasted both and, quite honestly, I'd never buy them again. The Whopper was nothing like it was on the commercials, but then, what is.
The Big Mac was messy and the meat didn't taste like anything. I don't think I finished eating either one of them.

For the money, I'd rather have a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar burger. It actually tastes like real meat.

[isilzha]

I'm interested in the commercial now, but will I be in 4 days? Only time will tell.

[ping]

Ping, neither one really. I think I was the only one that tasted both and, quite honestly, I'd never buy them again. The Whopper was nothing like it was on the commercials, but then, what is.
The Big Mac was messy and the meat didn't taste like anything. I don't think I finished eating either one of them.

For the money, I'd rather have a Carl's Jr. Six Dollar burger. It actually tastes like real meat.

I don't like either of them either. For me the burgers have to be homemade or bought from places like Fuddruckers or Red Robin. Also those small, off the beaten path burger joints tend to make really good ones.