Faith Smith

In a recent article, Burger King’s New Trolling Ploy Sends Fans to McDonald’s to Unlock a 1-Cent Whopper Deal written by Gabriel Beltrone, is discussing the trolling that Burger King is doing with what they call the ‘Whopper Detour’. This new stunt basically goes like this, you download the Burger King app, drive within 600ft of a McDonalds, then you are able to order a whopper for 1 cent, and then you have to drive to the nearest Burger King to pick it up. This geotargeting advertising is actually sending customers to what they called their “arch-rival’s” stores in hope they will make the trip back to a Burger King. There have been things like this before between to the two fast food chains, but nothing as petty and trolling as this one. Others included the Whopper-Big Mac mashup for World Peace day or the Whopper Sacrifice where is you unfriended 10 people, you received a coupon. The question is, will this new kind of funny, trolling advertising work? Or do you think that the Whopper isn’t worth the hassle of having to drive to two separate locations? The end of the article states, “customers might still be better off thanking Burger King for the laugh and springing for the closer Big Mac” (Beltrone).

I chose this article because I found the title interesting at first. Then when looking at the article, I found that it was funny because I had never really heard of anything like this before. I think it’s an interesting way to get people to laugh and have them save money to come get a burger, but just as the article talks about; I see the possibility of good publicity, but not sure about profit.

In the article, Banned From TV, This Conservation Ad Has Become a Viral Sensation With 35 Million Views written by David Griner found on Ad Week, shows how social media can really take something away and support a brand. The article discusses how in the UK Greenpeace and Iceland Foods came together to try a turn out a TV ad about them being against deforestation by the palm oil industry. The ad shows an orangutan in a little girls’ bedroom basically destroying it. The little girls tell it to leave, but before given the chance asks why they were there in the first place. The orangutan says that people were in his forest, destroying his home, and taking his family. The article then discusses how the UK regulators declined to allow the ad to be played on tv. Because of the ban, this video has hit more than 35 million views on all platforms. Also, because of the controversy along with the ad itself and the being banned, it was mentioned over 100,000 times on Twitter alone. This article sparked my interest because for one I had seen the advertisement on social media and was intrigued that it was initially banned from UK tv. Then as I was reading, it became more interesting to me that possibly because of the ad being banned from tv, the company and the organization became more recognized that they would have just being on tv. It also made me think about how regulators are so interested in what makes money for them, they might not always be worried about what could be hurting animals and the environment. To me, this begs the question about advertising. Even though this ad was meant to be on tv, could it be possible this ad blew up and was able to raise more awareness because of the controversy. I find this to be interesting because even though it may not have been on purpose, was this a super effective marketing strategy for the company and organization?

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/reeses-halloween-vending-machine-lets-you-exchange-trash-candy-for-the-good-stuff/