Business Pundit

(See the ads here.)

…assuming the mark is to generate buzz and controversy. From the Wall Street Journal:

Next week, Burger King kicks off a major ad campaign that involves a unique twist on the tried-and-true marketing technique of taste testing. The campaign is already generating controversy.

One ad, set to begin airing Monday, features images of villagers in traditional garb choosing the Whopper over the Big Mac. A Transylvanian woman, an Inuit tribesman from the Icelandic tundra and others point and, in their native tongues, declare their preference for Burger King’s flagship product.

I find the ads ignorant and mildly amusing. Those Hmong tribesmen from Chiang Mai have probably been exposed to millions of tourists. Giving them a fast-food hamburger–which Chiang Mai can offer plenty of anyway–isn’t exactly a huge leap. I’m not sure about how close the other “Whopper Virgins” naturally are to hamburgers, but I can’t imagine that they’re shocked at the prospect of trying one, nor by Americans asking them weird favors.

Some people are labeling the ads as colonial and exploitative:

The campaign has also stirred up a welter of online commentary. Brian Morrissey, writing on Adfreak.com, likens the campaign to colonialism and declares it “embarrassing and emblematic of how ignorant Americans still seem to the rest of the world.”

“It doesn’t get much more offensive than this,” noted The Inquisitor blog. “If visiting poor people in remote locations, some who would be at best surviving on below poverty levels and throwing a burger in their faces isn’t bad enough, it gets better, because they also ask the Whopper Virgins to compare the taste of the Whopper to a McDonalds Big Mac as well.

I think that this kind of controversy was exactly what ad agency Crispin Porter + Bugosky was going for. I don’t find the ads terribly offensive. Is filming a native eating a burger that much more exploitative than tourism, which fosters busloads of fascinated stares and cameras-in-face a week, often for nothing in return? Is it that much more ignorant or colonial?

Crispin Porter is using an old, existing colonialist fascination with natives (as evidenced through the likes of Survivor and Tarzan) to perpetuate a certain take among Americans, who are indeed largely ignorant of other people in the world. The bottom line is that these people are always exotified, whether they’re being interviewed for a documentary or given a burger. Media benefits by building separation between “us”–the wise consumers–and “them,” the funny-looking primitives.

It’s not the best image to perpetuate, but neither is feeling sorry for “them” and assuming guilt for the fact that a corporation is, once again, profiting off our ignorance of other cultures. That still puts us at a perceived advantage: We have the knowledge and riches to judge what is right or wrong for these tribespeople. Fact is that we don’t.

Only the tribespeople themselves can accurately decide what is good or bad for them. The real problem lies in the fact that corporations and host countries rarely weigh tribal input or give tribes adequate information about the issues facing them. Nor do they offer tribes many options on how to present themselves to the global eye. The systematic “evil,” as it were, is already in place. The company is using information gaps associated with preconceived notions to make money. It is not the source of the problem. Nor are the ads.

So we go on judging and groveling, bolstering the ad’s notoriety while taking on the equally obnoxious role of being de facto spokespeople for the natives.

I’d like to see a reporter go in and objectively ask the natives themselves what they thought of the commercial. I’d like to see the natives answer honestly, not in a way they feel they should answer. Then I’ll feel ready to say that the commercial is wrong, wrong, wrong.