Whopper Tastelessness

Nothing says "Ugly American" quite like the average fast-food advertisement. For the most part, such ads, which extol the benefits of cramming the maximum possible amount of horrible food into one's gullet (often with the explicit message that doing so is somehow manly), are aimed squarely at American mouth-breathers in baseball caps. Their harm is stateside, mostly.

But a new campaign from Burger King is drawing an increasingly loud chorus of jeers for its shameless, if implicit, vibe of exploitative corporate colonialism. The campaign, "Whopper Virgins," takes taste tests to remote areas, where villagers, who have perhaps never even heard of Burger King or McDonald's, are asked to choose between the Whopper and the Big Mac. Have a look at the Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog.

Burger King calls it "the world's biggest taste test" and asks Hmong tribesmen in Thailand, farmers in Romania, and Inuits in Greenland to choose. Of course, they most often choose the Whopper, according to Burger King.

As American dietary patterns spread worldwide, so, too, do waistlines and rates of heart disease and cancer. And to various degrees, the areas where the spots were shot are beset with poverty. Should this really be the stuff of wacky TV commercials?

The campaign is "outrageous," said Sharon Akabas, of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, in an interview with the New York Daily News.

In a letter (pdf) to media outlets, Burger King and the agency responsible for the ad—the MDC Partners-owned Crispin Porter + Bogusky—Seng T. Vang, a Hmong American in St. Paul, Minn., took issue with the portrayal of Hmong Thais as ignorant and backward. Does Burger King "really expect the 150,000 Hmong in Thailand to be so 'pure' (primitive is what you want the consumer to believe) that they don't know what a burger is?" he asked.

Susan Robison, the chain's chief flack, responded with a letter (pdf) of her own. "First," she wrote, "let me assure you that we always strive to be sensitive to cultural concerns. It is our practice to associate our brand with campaigns that are within the bounds of good taste, executed appropriately, and not offensive to any substantial population group."

She goes on to fail utterly to prove that assertion, which in any case is refuted by years of inane and distasteful television campaigns.