Just When You Thought Adveritising Couldn't Get More Annoying, There's This

This jerk in a Burger King ad will trigger your Google Home
and other devices, subjecting you to a cacaphony of
Burger King advertising. Ugh. 

UPDATE:

The Burger King Google device advertisement has backfired. As noted below in yesterday's post, the ad triggers voice activated to start reciting the Wikipedia entry for the fast food chain's Whopper sandwich.

So, people went into Wikipedia and altered the Whopper entry.

According to The Independent, the change in the Wikipedia definition of the Whopper describes it as containing cyanide, causes cancer and is the worst product sold by Burger King.

Take that!

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION

Burger King has a great new idea to piss people off through advertising.

According to CNBC:

"Burger King is launching a full-fledged marketing blitz based on triggering voice-activated Google devices, in what could become a grim precedent for TV and radio ads talking directly to voice-activated gadgets like smartphones and Amazon's Echo speakers. 

The fast food company's new TV ad features a person looking directly into the camera and saying, "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger"", which - if anything goes as planned - will trigger Google devices like the Google Home assistant and Android phones that have enabled voice search."

Great. you got yourself a handy dandy Google Home assistant or Amazon Echo - and they are kind of cool - and now you have to hide them away and shut them down every time you turn on the TV or radio.

Or, you will have to endure these devices yakking on about the stupid product some advertiser has that triggered the devices.  The ad makes the devices start reading the Wikipedia entry for Burger King's Whopper. You can see why CNBC called the Burger King ad a "grim precedent."

By the way, this is not what Google and Amazon intended with their devices. Neither company worked with Burger King or anyone else to do these ads, says CNBC. 

Burger King president Jose Cil is enthusiastic about the idea. "We saw it as technology to essentially punch through that fourth wall....a cool way to connect directly with our guests."

I don't want Burger King or any other advertiser punching through any of my walls.  

I keep hearing from the ad industry that annoying ads are effective because they make you remember the brand. 

It's true I remember the brand after seeing a bad ad, but not in a positive way that makes me want to buy the product.  You'd think this would be obvious. 

Now that I know about Burger King's device-triggering ad, I can picture myself driving by a Burger King, remembering the Google Home-triggering ad and going, "ugh" before driving on as fast as I can. 

I have not found any article or information that explains to me how annoying ads can make me or anybody else buy products.  I will confess that compelling ads, done well and unobtrusively, will make me take a second look at a product and make me consider buying it. 

Why don't most advertisers understand that concept?

Some advertisers recognize we don't like them and their products with annoying ads. Proctor and Gamble is backing a group called Coalition for Better Ads to curb the most intrusive and infuriating types of ads online and on mobile devices. 

We'll see if that has any effect. 

On the bright side of sorts, there's a bit of an arms race to stop the Burger King ad from being effective. Tech Crunch reports Google did something that stops the ad from working on their devices. 

For the first two hours after the ad appeared, Google devices were triggered by them. Then, it stopped working, Tech Crunch said. 

Score one for Google!

But, then again, there are reports this morning that Burger King altered their ad to make it trigger Google devices again.

Sigh. 

For the record, here's that odious Burger King ad: