Read the following article: Burger King Under Fire
Post your answers by Wednesday, March 4th at 12pm (noon).
1. Describe the type of advertising research method that was used in order to create this campaign (i.e. descriptive, causal, exploratory, secondary, primary, etc) and why this research method was chosen. Provide facts and examples from your research textbook and classroom discussions.
2. Provide an analysis as to why or why not this campaign crosses an ethical/unethical line. Support your analysis with facts and evidence from your ethics textbook and classroom discussions.
3. This campaign has been called "insensitive" by critics. Did the agency/client enact creative self-regulation, or was the possibility of controversy worth the risk and overall campaign publicity?
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ReplyDelete3. The agency in this case did not enact self regulation of any kind. Self regulation involves you thinking beyond the profitable outcomes of the campaign to the possible long term negative implications. This self regulation is especially important with regards to using other people, i.e. "Kant's Categorical Imperative." Self regulation is there to regulate these issues without having to have complications with legislative bodies. This is a major ethical offense I'm very surprised the campaign hasn't been canceled by such regulatory bodies.
ReplyDelete2. The campaign is a major violation of universal public morality with no regard for those affected. This campaign crosses more than one major ethical line and disregards the three core concepts of ethics in advertising. Responsibility: There is no responsibility on the part of those running the campaign. They are willing to spend x amount of dollars in order to travel into remote areas where very poor people live and promote their unhealthy food product. This is a highly irresponsible endeavor. Accountability and intention have also been neglected in this campaign. They full knowingly are exploiting and using these people to prove a point. They are not only introducing them to highly unhealthy food but as someone pointed out, they didn't even mention the mass hunger that is in these countries.They are not acting accountable for the effect or long term outcome of the campaign. they are contributing to the ignorant stigma that America holds.
ReplyDelete1. The research is primary. The information gathered was new and conducted by the company first hand. This research method was probably chosen because it was the best way to prove their point and support their unethical concept. In order to conduct such an elaborate taste test and make an assumption that their burger would be chosen they would only be able to use primary source of research for such a campaign.
ReplyDelete1. The researched gathered was first based off of secondary research. The burger king representatives wanted to show a new way of taste testing that didn’t involve the clutter of other advertisements and other forms of competition. Their research concluded that most people in America has had a burger and thus could not be applicable to their “true taste” test. So they advanced to primary research and flew to different parts of the world where the word “burger” as they put it, wasn’t even part of the vocabulary. Their overall test involved individual focus groups that were placed in both a controlled and natural setting and the people involved in the study were asked which burger they preferred. This was a simple, straight forward test that had no influence to persuade the ones consumer the burgers to think one way or the other.
ReplyDelete2. This campaign crossed many unethical lines. First off, they introduced such an unhealthy fast food item to people who made, gathered, and hunted their own food just to get what they called “true taste” and “whopper virgins.” Also, they down played the peoples intelligence saying they didn’t have a word for “burger” etc when there is proof that they do have another name for it, sandwich for example, and the food had to be made and delivered within 15 minutes for the food to be “fresh” so a location had to be close by for this to be put into effect. Except the end portion of the video when they imported a flame broiler into these peoples lands just to have everyone involved in this meal. The only unethical part of this campaign is that the people in which this was tested on volunteered and it was based on curiosity and free will, and perhaps an exchange or some type of paid service for their time. The people selected were not being treated as “people” but as a way to gather information to give burger king a proud stance in the “majority rules” scenario.
3. The agency/client probably didn’t see it as offensive because it didn’t cause “harm” and it was a onetime deal with these people. Yes, the only way to gather true taste is to approach somebody who hasn’t had the experience to be judgmental, but down playing their intelligence by mocking their un-involvement in these types of food is just wrong. They took a risk knowing that something big was going to form from all this. Whether it was going to be a positive mass media of publicity or negative publicity, people were going to be familiar with the term “whopper virgins.” Was it worth the risk? It depends. Was burger king trying to boost its sales, make a statement, or just make something memorable? The true intensions besides “true taste” are still left unanswered.