Burger King’s New Commercial Tried To Hack Google And It Terribly Backfired
Okay, Google, tell me how much of a failure Burger King’s new ad was.
The fast food chain tried to “hack” the massive search website by purposefully activating Google Home and Android devices in its latest fifteen-second commercial. In the ad, the actor says that fifteen seconds isn’t long enough to describe Burger King’s “fresh ingredients,” so instead, he gets up close to the camera and says:
“Okay Google, what is the Whopper Burger?”
The ad was able to activate the devices, but not without sparking a ton of Internet outrage.
Ad companies: “why does everyone use ad blockers?”
Everyone: “INTRUSIVE ADS ARE BAD”
Burger King: “Ok Google, define intrusive”
— small dog friend (@duckinator) April 13, 2017
[goes home, smashes Amazon Alexa with a baseball bat, heads to Taco Bell] https://t.co/cWI3dCqray
— Nick Corasaniti (@NYTnickc) April 12, 2017
What’s more, people figured out that Google was just repeating the first sentence of the Wikipedia definition for a Whopper, so they began altering the definition to get devices to repeat negative comments about the Whopper.
Google killed Burger King’s newest TV ad that had a disastrous flaw pic.twitter.com/AfejAZrc34
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) April 13, 2017
Business Insider got a few of the funniest ones, which include someone changing the definition to call the Whopper the “worst hamburger product” sold by the chain and even changing the ingredients to include children and cyanide.
Google eventually caught wind of what was happening and disabled the ad from activating its Google Home and Android devices.
Burger King president José Cil said that the company “thought this was a good way to make a connection and go directly to guests and tell a story about our product.” Instead, consumers have reacted negatively to having their privacy invaded and devices controlled by a large corporation. Definitely not the reaction Burger King wanted from this ad.
If there’s one “whopping” message to take away from this ad, it’s that we can’t have it our way when it comes to who can control our technology.
