Burger King, Of All Outfits, Has The Best Net Neutrality Explanation

In a viral video that demonstrates the need for internet Net
Neutrality, a Burger King franchise angers customers by
modeling their service in a way that mimics an internet
without Net Neutrality. 

Net Neutrality, something important that the FCC just overturned, is a hard nut to explain. It's especially difficult to explain why it's important, and why the FCC's decision will affect you and me.

Essentially, Net Neutrality is a principle that prohibits internet service providers from speeding up or slowing down access to content, or blocking it altogether, from any application or website you want to use.  

The fear is big corporate internet providers - think AT&T and Verizon, that ilk - will slow down or block content that either they don't make money from, or contain messages they don't want you to hear or see.  Or they'll make you pay exorbitant prices for content you want to see, but is not normally a moneymaker for them.

Net Neutrality was how the internet worked under the Republican-led FCC, under its chairman, a former Verizon lawyer, decided to do away with it. 

Quite a few people in Congress, including a number of Republicans, are interested in enshrining Net Neutrality back into law. 

Of course, the internet service provider lobbyists don't want this. These internet providers are even trying to block or close down municipal internet service providers. There's now something like 750 local municipal providers around the United States.

 The municipal ones are usually run by local governments, or panels, and have faster download speeds and are less expensive to consumers than internet access offered by the big companies.

So anyway, it's up to the rest of the public to apply pressure. How do you get the public to sign on to such an esoteric idea?

Burger King, of all companies, has found a way to do that with its flagship Whopper sandwich. Burger King put out a wonderful video that demonstrates how a lack of Net Neutrality works.

People who want a Whopper right away would have to pay a whopping $26. Or, if you don't want to pay that much, you'd have to wait a ridiculously long time for your Whopper, even if there's no logical reason to make you wait - the Whoppers are already ready to serve. Or, in the video, if you don't want to wait for the Whopper, you can settle for a chicken sandwich, though you probably don't want chicken.

The video is brilliant. It is so worth the watch:

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:

Thailand Mobile Phone, And Burger King Ad Violate Rule That Ads Must Be Bad And Irritating

How does the dad in this Thailand mobile
phone ad manage this crying baby?  

As I occasionally do in this blog, I try to give positive reinforcement to those few awesome advertisters that (thankfully) violate what seems to be a code of conduct for television commercials.

That code dictates that all advertising must be stupid, irritating, talent-free, must insult our intelligence and show no creativity.

Today, I give kudos to the Thailand mobile phone company DTAC, and Burger King, who released a couple good ads recently.

As if to demonstrate the public craves compelling advertising, both the mobile phone ad and the Burger King advertisement videos have gone viral.

What's different about this Whopper?
Watch the ad below and find out. 

I don't expect much from ads, and that's OK. The point of them is to convince us to buy a product, so you can't necessarily get to incredible film making like in the movie Citizen Kane or something.

But there's room for emotion and camera work and a good script in a short format like advertising, and the Thailand DTAC mobile phone ad, from the agency Y&R does that.   

It shows a young dad struggling with a crying infant while his wife shops at a grocery store. He calls her for help on the spiffy mobile home that's in the ad.

The ad nicely demonstrates how wonderful the phone is, but includes an awesome note about what the phone CAN'T replace. Watch the phone ad, as it's wonderful, then below that, we get into the very good Burger King ad.

Here's the phone ad:



The Burger King ad was only shown locally around San Francisco around the time of the city's recent gay pride celebration. But Burger King meant for the ad to be seen on line around the world.

In the ad, made by the agency David, Miami, Pride participants and other city residents, presumably not actors but actual people, stop at a San Francisco Burger King and asked if they want to try a Burger King Pride Whopper.

The Burger King workers don't give customers much information about what might be different about the Pride Whoppers, but the people who try the burger quickly figure out what is different, and what is not different about the burger.

Very nice. Watch: