Ridin' With The King

I’m annoyed by the “Whopper Freakout” Burker King commercials, the ones where they show what happens to people visiting a Burger King when that location has supposedly stopped selling the Whopper for a day. It’s a really bizarre marketing strategy.

Look, if we remove just one item from our menu, most of our customers don’t even want to eat here anymore! The rest of our food is so bad that customers will threaten the lives of our managers! Come on in! Have it your way!

I get that the Whopper is the item they’re known for and everything, but if you wanted to go down this road wouldn’t be a little better to first show people being sad to not have a Whopper … but then realizing that, “Wow, these chicken fries are great!” Every other company in the world seems to understand that what people want is choice. But then most companies also realize that advertising shouldn’t terrify customers, too. I’m looking at you, The King.

A proviso. The above explains why the new campaign confuses me. It doesn’t explain why it annoys me. Here then:

So, it’s Saturday night and I’m craving a burger (specifically, Red Robin’s Blue Ribbon Burger), but I’m not really interested in going to a restaurant. So, I get in the car, I’ m heading west on Bell toward Jack In The Box … when on the radio comes one of those damn Whopper Freakout ads. And damned if it didn’t make me crave a Whopper. And, yes, I made a U-turn, and went to Burger King.

Sometimes I hate myself.