Blogless: Blog of Design Less Better.

Posts tagged Tastelessness.

Getting the joke (or not)

The (anti-)branding blog Dimbulb recently critiqued a Burger King franchise for its risky messaging on the big board. But their analysis seems to have missed the joke.

A sign at Burger King: 'Global warming is baloney'

Dimbulb's take is this: "the franchisee is trying to tell the local base of customer [sic] something that matters to them, albeit unrelated to the business or experience of retailing fast food...Buy BK if you're a stalwart for burning oil and coal; hell, let's split some atoms while we're at it!"

That might be a good analysis (of a seriously whackadoo franchise owner, among other things) if the author hadn't failed to connect the two bits of text on the sign. As it stands, in other words, I think he just missed the joke. For those who also missed it, here it is:

  1. Global warming is baloney;
  2. therefore, we can conscionably and will facilitate your ability to drive your wasteful, fossil-fuel-powered cars through our wasteful, fossil-fuel-powered restaurant. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year.

Ha ha, right?

Now, the fact that this message is less likely a contentious non sequitur political statement than a one-liner, less neo-conservative psychosis than tastelessness, doesn't make it any less an advertising misstep. But it does disabuse us of the seemingly inexplicable belief that the franchise seriously asserted a value proposition like this ("rather a Whopper at 2AM tonight than a planet in 10,000 years") in such a bald-faced way.

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PaulJul 29, 2009