The "most overtly blow-jobby ad I've ever seen."

Gawker says:

For benefit of those of you who don't "get it," this is what's known as "branding" in the industry. Or something.

But wait, if that's not enough for you, here's the actual text of the ad:

Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce.

The only thing this ad is missing is the disclaimer that you'll actually get fewer blowjobs if you eat these sandwiches, but perhaps that's the "genius" of advertising that we simpletons on the outside just don't get.

Sex sells food and food is a sex substitute. The food doesn't get you sex, but your desire for sex can be channeled into food-eating. I think we know that.

Gawker imagines that it's funny to say that food will make you fat and fat will keep you from having sex. They had to find some way to smirk and sneer. But the fact is, we all need some food, and the ad is eye-catching and the food looks pretty good. Also:

1. The ad is viral. Gawker printed it, and so did I.

2. The undeniably blatant blow-jobbiness is pure comedy, and that makes it cleaner than subtly sexual ads. Let's all have a good laugh. And a sandwich. And a blow job!

3. Burger King has a sandwich aimed at young guys. It's aimed at a young gal in the ad, but it's an ad aimed at young guys. They'll remember this sandwich.

It's a good ad.

ADDED: Note how well they've named the sandwich to promote hilarity at the counter: "Do you want the seven incher?" "I'll have the seven incher." "I love the seven incher." "I need a seven incher." Etc. Etc.

AND: Seven. It had to be 7. They probably thought about 8, even 9, and also 6. But in the end, it had to be 7. That was exactly right. Slightly aspirational, but not intimidating.

"I can't tell the difference between Whizzo Butter and a dead crab."

This came up...



... back here (where we talking about the contrived outrage over the "Whooper Virgins" taste test).

Of course, it was our wonderful Bissage again.

Surely, you can tell the difference between Bissage...

... and Quayle...

I hate [when people say something is just so wrong on so many levels that they can't even begin to explain why] because people that say that all the time always try to imply that they deal with multitudes of levels all the time.

But seriously – how many levels are there?

Two? Maybe three, tops?

I actually know a guy that commonly dealt with five levels, but he was from Bayonne, New Jersey.

But this idea that there are so many levels is pure post-modern, crit-studies rubbish.

It is all an urban myth that has its origins in a particular budget fight in the humanities department of an well-known Ivy League University.

... and Chip Ahoy...

The contrived outrage is ridiculous on so many levels I must put down my game of multi-dimensional chess and set aside my 3-D puzzle for the moment and stop multi-tasking this four-course luncheon while responding to this blog entry while doing laundry while simultaneously playing with my puppy to respond to this while keeping open ten other windows and holding three conversations through instant messaging and solving this crossword puzzle.

1) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the psychological level

2) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the political level

3) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sociological level

4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the economic level

4) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the international level

5) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the sexual level

6) the contrived outrage is ridiculous on the contrivance level

Ravaging "The Whopper Virgins."

Here's an ad from a Burger King campaign that's causing outrage:



Now, I have a problem with this that is entirely different from the outrage I'm reading about. My problem is the use of sexual innuendo: "virgins," especially in connection with an encounter with a "Whopper." Don't tell me "Whopper" isn't a sexual reference. Yes, a "whopper" is also a lie, but I have seen novelty underpants stamped with the Burger King logo and the slogan "Home of the Whopper." Even if it wasn't the original intention behind the name, the association is easily enough made that you don't want to stimulate it with the word "virgin" -- unless you actually do want people to think about your product that way. You may say that's crazy -- that would be disgusting! But creating associations between food and sex is extremely common -- all that orgasmic groaning and grimacing over food in ads -- and people eagerly scarf down far more obviously phallic foods than hamburgers all the time -- such as the hamburger's classic competition, the hot dog.

But that's my problem. The problem other people are having with the ad campaign goes like this:

"It's outrageous," Sharon Akabas of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, told the New York Daily News. "What's next? Are we going to start taking guns out to some of these remote places and ask them which one they like better?"

Marilyn Borchardt, development director for Food First, called the campaign insensitive.

"The ad's not even acknowledging that there's even hunger in any of these places," she told the Daily News.

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.

"It's hard to place exactly where this begins on the level of wrongness."

I hate when people say something is just so wrong on so many levels that they can't even begin to explain why. Make the effort!

1. Is it wrong because some people in the world are poor and hungry? Is everyone who isn't us part of one big undifferentiated mass? If the commercial showed hungry, poverty stricken individuals, there would indeed be something offensive about offering a few of them big hamburgers and expecting them to report an opinion about which of the 2 relatively similar objects was marginally better, but the people in the commercial don't look food deprived or oppressed. They are just ordinary people from some specific, relatively isolated location.

2. Is it wrong because we shouldn't be intruding on -- colonizing! -- foreign cultures with our food? Presumably, those who have this problem would not have a problem with a commercial showing an American midwesterner or American rural southerner -- we don't call them "peasants" -- eating, say, Thai food or Indian food for the first time. Isn't it hypocritical and paternalistic to think it's wrong show some non-American trying our food for the first time?

3. Is it wrong because hamburgers are bad -- like guns! -- and we shouldn't be spreading them around the world? A hamburger is nothing more than a sandwich -- some meat and a few assorted trimmings between 2 slices of bread. There are plenty of things to worry about in this world. Do not fear the sandwich.

***

I got to that article today via Copious Dissent, via Conservative Grapevine. But I read about it yesterday on Rachel Lucas. Rachel said:

Do you ever find yourself reading an article, and you get pissed off at the subject of the article, like this is so stupid, but then wham, then you get to the part where a critic of the subject says something even more stupid about the original stupidity? And you can’t decide who is the most stupid...

Burger King and me.

That last post reminded me that I've never mentioned that I worked for a year in a famous ad agency, J. Walter Thompson. This was in 1977-1978, right before I went to law school. I had a boring job, but it's kind of fun to remember the excitement that surrounded ad campaigns for important clients. I especially remember how important Burger King was. There was a separate part of the office space that you entered through the sort of doors that would be on a BK restaurant. When the campaign was unveiled, everyone in the office was invited to the posh screening room to watch the first commercial. The commercial looked impossibly beautifully photographed as it appeared on the finest movie screen. Those layers of onion and tomato and lettuce were so perfectly detailed. The little boy riding on the back of a truck was so impossibly adorable as he sang the most wonderful jingle of all time:

Who's got the best darn burger in the whole wide world? Burger King and me!

ADDED: Here's YouTube of one of the ads in the series. And the slogan was "Burger King and I," not "Burger King and me!"