From The Ypulse WTF Files: Enough With The Burger Porn

Sigh. Yet another example of tired, sexist marketing from Burger King. In the UK, the brand recently launched the site Singing in the Shower: The World’s First Guilt Free Showercam as a promotion for breakfast foods. It’s not the first campaign to center around a hot girl (Padma, Paris) writhing around and scarfing a burger or the like, but it does take the ogling to a creepy,new viral place.

Basically, if the name didn’t tip you off, the site involves daily early morning footage of a girl in a bikini singing a pop song while taking a shower And how does food fit in? With burger bras and other food-themed bikinis. So site visitors can not only vote on the song they’d like the unnamed “Shower Babe” to sing, but also whether they’d like to see her wearing burgers or fried eggs for the performance. Charming, no?

Once again, this raises the question of whether the gains (the target audience potentially watching and liking the videos [at 9:30 a.m] and going out and buying breakfast sandwiches) is worth the cost of influential bloggers, social networkers and YouTube viewers (see comments on the outtake videos the brand leaked) tearing the brand apart for a marketing technique that at best can be interpreted as slightly sleazy, and at worst trivializing the type of poor digital decisions that campaigns like A Thin Line and Give It A Ponder are working hard to get teens to take seriously. It’s probably also worth noting that we found in recent Ypulse Research that equal numbers of teen boys and girls are spending money on fast food. I’m not sure how this compares to numbers in the U.K., but if I was Burger King I’d look into it.

For more coverage of youth marketing, go to the Ypulse Youth Marketing Channel sponsored by Youth Marketing Connection.