Fast Food Indignation
I am home after another of my customary 3 a.m. McDonalds ventures (I have a suspicion that more of my money goes there than anywhere else. This may be a problem). If I got up at a reasonable hour and went to bed at a reasonable hour I might be less likely to be craving a high-fat meal immediately before I settle down for the night, I suppose. But that's not the point.
The point is this: on the way home I was struck by the reason I go to McDonalds and not Burger King. There are a few reasons, price and taste being foremost, as you'd expect with any other restaurant. I've always found Burger King burgers taste oddly sweet, as if the buns were baked with extra sugar in them or something. McDonalds is bigger on the salt, so no goitres for me anytime soon. Plus, if there's a $2 discrepancy in the price of a double cheeseburger, something's up. Lately, though, I've noticed something a little more interesting that's put me off Burger King.
It's the ads. And how incredibly stupid they are.
It's not just the fact that the 'King' has a head made out of plastic, despite how pants-wettingly creepy that is. If he ever got something in his eye (if he actually could), it's there for life. Or the frustratingly nasal voice-over at the end: "The King won't be hah-ppy!" Note the rising inflection that makes me want to stab my eardrums with toothpicks. It's the total meaninglessness of the idea. The 'King' wants the Whopper burger to be the number one seller in New Zealand. Which is fair enough; if you were a fast food restaurant you'd want to beat the big dogs, wouldn't you? Wrong. It's not the desire for it to be the number one seller in New Zealand, it's the desire for it to be number one in Burger King. Does anybody else see how utterly pointless that is? You've just devoted an entire ad campaign to trying to beat your own selling statistics, BK.
The worst part, of course, is that by asking people to buy the Whopper instead of something else, they're reducing their profits. That's right: a fast food chain is actually asking you to buy one of the cheaper items on their menu. That said, if they're making a move this ridiculous I'm not going to dignify it with my cash.