Responsible or not? Burger King’s Whopper Virgins

I saw the commercial for the first time just a day ago and was instantly appalled. It provoked me to think about what I found most appalling. I’m no prude, but I initially thought that the use of the word “virgin” in a broadcast commercial was crude and uncalled for.

That said, however, if I’m really honest, I think I would have given the ad a pass for being crude if it had just been funny.

Like so many ideas, this one probably sounded interesting in the pitch, but the final execution is lame and painful to watch. They were obviously aiming for a Borat-style culture clash that makes us laugh at the absurdity of people who live differently, but they didn’t (and frankly couldn’t and still get it on the air) go far enough to make this work.

They should have shelved this idea. It won’t work unless you can take it to a much more absurd (i.e., non-politically correct) level of comedy. BTW, the video you showed here on the blog isn’t the commercial I saw on the air. The video is even more dull and pointless. People in different companies eat different foods. We get it. Yawn…

Carri Bugbee
Social Profiles: https://chi.mp/s/carribugbee.mp

I guess I was able to look beyond the commercialization of this film, and I really enjoyed the video. How fascinating to see people all over the world be exposed to something new.

At no point did I get the sense that the hamburger execs were planning to open some new outlets in Greenland, or Outer Mongolia based on these taste tests. The video seemed more like a social experiment. It was fantastic to watch people try and figure out how to eat a hamburger when you and I just take it for granted. It was also wonderful to see these communities welcome the film crew with their own food and culture.

The only sad note is that for these people their first and perhaps last foray into the world of the hamburger was the dreck from BK & McDonalds

I was a little upset that it was done in impoverished areas. I wanted to end the video, within 3 minutes of watching. More upset that the word “virgin” was used to market. I found it very offensive, it did not motivate me to visit BK. Poor marketing.

I don’t think the campaign is either responsible or irresponsible. It’s just an original take on taste tests, and actually kind of interesting.

I was born in Vietnam and am half-Asian, and I don’t find the ads offensive. While living in Japan and Taiwan, I enjoyed introducing people to various American foods and gauging their reactions. Likewise, they enjoyed introducing various foods to me. At one point, I could have been called a “sea-urchin virgin,” and would not have been offended in the least.

Indeed, I’m rather surprised that people are finding “virgin” offensive. How many decades has it been since Madonna sang “Like a virgin”? I think the use of the term is funny. I’m just amazed that Richard Branson hasn’t sued for trademark infringement.

Overall, I commend Burger King for giving us an original concept and competing on the basis of quality. Other fast food chains are reacting to the recession with price warfare, which is short sighted and boring to watch. And in the case of Subway’s “five dollar footlong” commercials, painful to endure.

Alright! I think I see where everyone (myself included) is confused about the location of these places. I re-watched the video and their TESTING facility was 15 minutes away from the McD’s and BK in Bucharest. Then they all went back the the villages, which are not 15 minutes away.

Honestly, I don’t get where the film’s critics are coming from, I thought it was fascinating. I watched a story about it on CBS this morning, and one of the critics was blasting them for doing this in “impoverished” areas, it didn’t strike me that way, they were an entirely different culture, a culture *we’re* not familiar with either, obviously rural cultures as opposed to city cultures. What we call rural in America takes on a whole different meaning in Europe and Asia, we have big ol pickups and tractors in our rural picture, and happy farmers with the latest equipment and electricity milking cows in a sterile environment, we just don’t relate to rural in the way that Europeans and Asians do. A representative from Burger King responded that these people were in no way starving, that food was abundant in the locations where they filmed this, and they were very careful to make sure that they were going to locations where food was abundant and the people were healthy and happy in their cultural context. While Americans would look at their surroundings and consider that if an American lived that way, we would consider such an American to be “impoverished” by our standards, an American would look at a culture like that and liken it to some remote hollers in Appalachia, and Americans consider such rustic types to be impoverished when they are not necessarily. As near as I can tell, these folks aren’t any more “impoverished” than Amish farmers, but we have a bias concerning things like living without electricity and department stores. That is a reflection of our arrogance and our spoiled American McMansion lifestyle to a point where even well meaning people have a blind spot. It really didn’t strike me as an attempt at comedy, either, or as poking fun at these people, but again it seems to me to be lodged in American blind spots. If this were a show on the National Geographic channel where scientific types go out to study a tribal society, and expose the members of the tribe to cultural artifacts such as watches or Tupperware, the same folks who are blasting this idea would probably find it interesting as a scientific study, as opposed to a commercial, and would less likely have looked at it as “exploiting” these people if it were an actual documentary instead of a commercial. The point they would be missing then is that the whole point of the show would be to sell air time for the sponsors who sponsor the show, it’s still there to sell stuff, if you put Burger King on it, or National Geographic, yet it’s somehow more “pure” if you sandwich the sponsor’s commercials between segments of the “legitimate” show. If there is any irresponsibility going on, I would suggest that it is in Burger King making a commercial that Americans suffer culture shock in watching, and a little too cutting edge for some of the viewers to cope with. I don’t understand the hoohaw over the term Whopper Virgin either, the term Virgin has been used as slang in our culture for some time now to signify someone who has never done (insert activity), and not just as a descriptive of someone who has never had sex anymore. I found the cultural exchange of offering a town a burger party, then the town turns around and offers a cultural exchange of their local dishes looked like fun to me. I also liked that they showed all the responses, no matter what was picked, obviously the Whopper was in the lead, but there were plenty of responses of Big Mac or no preference shown, not just editing it to look like every one said Whopper Whopper Whopper, one guy would rather have seal meat, thank you very much…..maybe they just didn’t account for American blind spots where Americans observe a vastly different culture enough.

What about these Whopper, Perrier, Mercedes, IBIS and School Virgins?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gEyvS56Y9A

There’s a funny blog on freedomhaters.org on the Whopper Virgins commercial.

It ties it into Noam Chomsky and how the indigenous people on the commercials will most likely be forced to move to big cities when the fast food chains move in, and have to work for Burger King for a tenth of what American’s make.

Check it out here:

http://freedomhaters.org/content/what-would-noam-chomsky-say-about-burger-kings-whopper-virgin-ad-campaign