Burger King’s public relations & marketing firm are nothing short of brilliant. Is their latest ad in low taste? Definitely! Did their objective work? Absolutely! This is the out-of-the-box thinking that separates the major players from the nobodies.

Any company can get a certain amount of publicity if they have money for ad space and their PR firm has a big enough rolodex. If you are creative enough with your approach, not only will exposure cost significantly less, you will have reporters and consumers doing the publicity for you.

Let’s take Burger King’s latest ad as a prime example. Burger King knew exactly what they were doing by releasing the campaign. It was causing pure shock value. Not only did the ad itself attract attention, but it was in all of the major news organizations. Not just agencies publishing their press release, but their actual reporters writing articles themselves. All of a sudden Burger King’s little tasteless ad is everywhere and people are talking to one another. Burger King took its one PR firm and turned it into a hundred PR firms working for free.

How can Burger King get away with this? For one they have a very established brand and loyal fan base. They are big enough to drum up the attention and have a history of this type of advertising. Who is creepier than the mascot? It is that edge that separates them from the competition.

Yes that ad is going to offend some women, however only a small percentage of them are not going to get a Whopper because of it and the publicity will far outweigh that.

It is the classic case of oops sorry to have offended anyone, we will pull the ad immediately just like planned. Their ad wasn’t designed to get you to buy their latest sandwich, it was designed to get you talking about Burger King and that is exactly what it did.

You don’t always have to have the new product to be successful. You just need to know how to market it uniquely and to get the most bang for your buck. 

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