Would you believe it? Another bad brand tweet.
Would you believe it? Another bad brand tweet.
New year, same bad brand tweets.
Despite continual, exhaustive pleas from social media users for brands to stop taking part in every viral trend, popular meme, or noteworthy holiday celebration, the cringeworthy brand content persists.
The latest online outrage was sparked by Burger King UK, whose social media team thought it would be a good idea to fire off an International Women's Day thread that began with the words, "Women belong in the kitchen."
Yes, really.
The final two tweets in that thread are all well and good, but Burger King UK lost everyone with their delivery. The chain used a harmful, sexist stereotype to try to grab people's attention, then thought they could make everything fine by later revealing a "gotcha!"
The thing is, it's 2021, and we have to be better and demand better than this sort of tired, lazy, plainly offensive brand strategy.
Think of how simple it would have been to write a single tweet including all the information in Burger King UK's thread instead of shining a spotlight on "Women belong in the kitchen." Heck, just announce the ways in which you're supporting women and call it a day. Leave the gimmicks, the schticks, and the poor attempts at being witty behind. They're embarrassing.
Burger King UK's tweet has received a fair share of backlash all morning, with celebrities and fans of the chain tweeting their disappointment.
Amy Brown, who worked on Wendy's social media team in 2017, even responded to Burger King UK's brand fail by briefly changing her Twitter photo and display name to imitate the UK chain. Brown, who to this day has managed to create some of the only good brand tweets in history, has been trolling Burger King UK with a series of tweets about women from her recently rebranded personal account. (It's clear that unlike most brands, she remains exceptionally good at this.)
After Brown's fake Burger King tweets started to gain attention, Fernando Machado the Global Chief Marketing Officer at Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Burger King, weighed in on real chain's the controversy.
"Just hope people see thru the single tweet w/out context and understand the real intent behind this one," Machado tweeted. "If we stopped doing things because some stupid people do stupid things on the internet we wouldn't do anything. Our intention is good and I hope people can see thru that over time."
Brands, if you're reading this, for the love of all things online, your social media strategies need serious work. In order to stop killing memes, stop offending people, and stop making the already colossal list of cringey brand fails longer, start thinking and talking things out with a diverse group of people, and if need be, start sitting things out.
Posting nothing is so much better than posting forced, poorly created content. The internet will still be there, even if you miss a sacred opportunity to tweet, and opportunities to show your "personality" will come again. We promise.
It’s pretty obvious that they meant that not just men can be employed at their locations to work in their kitchens, but I see out of context it doesn’t look too good for them lol
ReplyDeleteI think this was brilliant because, well... here you are talking about it and flashing the BK logo all over social media. If you want them to stop doing these things, don't give them the free press... Oh, wait a minute, but if you do that, nobody will read Mashable. Get over yourself, Mashable and Nicole. You're exploiting it just like BK is.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe people should learn how threads work on Twitter?
ReplyDeleteIt’s a normal feature of the app. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Or maybe PR/social media people should know how their job works?
DeleteThey do, because here you are talking about it.
DeleteIt worked. Nobody would be talking about this initiative had they not done that. Not saying it was a good idea - but it accomplished what they were trying to do which is to get people all fired up and talking about a program that is actually designed (seemingly) to promote the success of women.
ReplyDeleteBurger King? What about all the little girls who want to grow up to be Burger Queen? No matter, I'm going to Dairy King to get a cone and think about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's mostly little boys in their kitchen lmao ;D ;D ;D
ReplyDeleteOnly one man in my life could out cook me so........
ReplyDeleteWell that's not a very smart thing to do is it?
ReplyDeleteThey probably didn't mean anything sexist but..yeah someone is getting fired
Pretty sure because you wrote an article on it, their marketing team got the exact reaction they wanted.
ReplyDelete“Meanwhile at the Legion of Doom... I mean Burger King marketing headquarters...”
ReplyDeleteAll this media attention, one would think maybe perhaps their tweet actually worked? Despite all this “bad press”.
Maybe they think we reached a world of equality so that tweet can be read as a joke? Think again... puke
ReplyDeleteLove it ;D
ReplyDeleteCalculated controversy that won’t have any impact on hamburger sales. No one was talking about Burger King yesterday. Well played, King.
ReplyDeleteHow horrible, Twitter should ban them
ReplyDeleteI belong in Fiji
ReplyDeleteShots fired ;D ❤
ReplyDeleteI'll have a sandwich ta ;) (y)
ReplyDeleteIt's almost as though someone at Burger King understands EXACTLY how advertising/publicity works... *Thinking*
ReplyDeletePrincess Bride GIF
ReplyDeletehttps://media1.tenor.co/images/e9d8f19b401cd4e7c0b891ed87ef8b71/tenor.gif?itemid=5023039
Pregnant Snack GIF
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Lol
ReplyDeleteNope, It's a thread , to discuss giving women a culinary school payment offer so that there is more Women CHEF with their own cuisine and Restaurant. But some site and people fixate only on the first post ... If they had only stated we offer culinary school payment , you would not have discussed it at all, it's a grab attention first tweet in a thread ... that you are failing at trying to take over today of all day ...
ReplyDeleteAnd you bought the joke! Great marketing
ReplyDeleteIDont Quite See The Problem Here GIF
ReplyDeletehttps://media1.tenor.co/images/1c4add1d717bbaec57548850979e15be/tenor.gif?itemid=16837823