You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

 

Last week, I talked about MasterCard’s “There Are Some Things Money Can’t Buy” commercials, and how they stood apart from other ads through their unique humility.

Well, this week we’re looking at a different form of humility in advertising, as Burger King delivers a very open, incredibly high-profile “my bad”.

They don’t go fully humble, of course. They emphasize that Burger King used to be super duper mega ultra awesome, we swear. And their new management is gonna make it super duper mega ultra awesome again. They only go so far as admitting that, in recent history … they’ve kinda sucked.

But that’s just a blip! Every visit you’ve ever had to Burger King may have been awful, but that’s from a narrow stretch of time that’s an outlier in their otherwise sterling reputation of rapidly prepared consumables. They’re willing to take a mea culpa on that, but want you to know everything’s gonna be amazing again, starting … now!

This is where I admit, I haven’t been to a Burger King in ages (on the occasions I hanker for a fast food burger, I’m strictly a Culver’s customer). I can’t recall if they were really that bad before, and don’t know if they’ve actually turned things around.

What I do find suspicious is, in going over the flaws they’re correcting, this commercial focuses almost entirely on poor service. Maybe poor service was an issue for them, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s not the gripe I’ve heard most often about fast food restaurants.

The main complaint I’ve heard in recent years is how fast food chains have jacked up their prices, far ahead of what inflation accounts for. A lot of people have just plain given up on fast food, because it’s not affordable anymore. So when this ad about mending recent bad behavior doesn’t say one word about reducing prices, it makes me wonder how genuine they really are about addressing customer concerns.

Still, Burger King must feel this sort of ad is working for them, because a few months later, they did another in the same mold: