Burger King Under Fire for Whopper Virgins Campaign

Read the following article: Burger King Under Fire

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/3546969/Burger-King-under-fire-for-Whopper-Virgins-taste-test-challenge.html

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?

Let's Talk Ethics at 11am!

ETHICAL DILEMMA
Lauren is the creative director at a major ad agency. She heard of some
billing practices involving a print project for a candy client that bothered her. It turns out that the print costs for the project had exceeded budget by $20,000. (The project budget was only $30,000.)

Asking the candy client for an additional $20,000 would be a problem. A fellow agency staffer struck a deal with the printer and added $20,000 to the bill of another of the agency’s large clients, an automobile company, who had a much larger budget and could afford the large bill.

This solution seemed to work out for all. The candy client did not know how far over budget the agency had gone; the printer got paid for all of the work it had done; and the agency did not have to eat its mistake.

QUESTION

If the agency had had a code of ethics, how could this over-budget situation been remedied in a more ethical manner?