Perhaps the people at Burger King were trying to be all funny in a politically incorrect way. Maybe they were trying to catch people’s attention by shocking them and then revealing something positive. However, it didn’t turn out quite as planned. The fast-food chain put out an ad saying women belong in the kitchen and then the next tweet explained what they meant by that. But people were having none of it.
“Women belong in the kitchen,’ said the tweet. The next tweet explained what this meant: that Burger King wanted to increase the proportion of women chefs in the country.
The official handle tendered an apology along with the clarification that the company wants to start offering culinary scholarships. Later, the original tweet was also taken down so that there would be no abuse.
The offending tweet already had 162K retweets and many hundreds of likes – showing that there were many who actually approved of what Burger King said.
However it general people hated the tweet. The outrage was instant – as was the app uninstalling in some cases.
No matter what message the brand was actually trying to send out, people were still disgusted that Burger King would say something this regressive and tone deaf.
The insensitivity of the tweet probably owes itself to this fact, felt some of the tweeple.
If Burger King was trying to make a joke, it was crass and unfunny and the timing couldn’t have been worse felt some of the tweeple.
It was pointed out that Burger King didn’t just tweet this out; there also a print marketing campaign built around this.
Burger King should have known that anything put out on the internet can be permanent. They may delete the tweet, but it will live on because thousands may have taken screen shots of it.
Of course Burger King meant to catch people's attention, but they did it using a sexist phrase. They could have done it antoher way.
Then there were those who believed that this was an innocuous tweet and that by deleting it, the brand appeared to have bowed down to a loud, thin-skinned minority.
A lot of people pointed out the real message of the tweet; the fact that Burger King is initiating scholarships for more women to become chefs. All the outrage was drowning out this positive initiative.
Here’s my two bits: yes the initial tweet was offensive but in a sense, it was actually mocking the kind of regressive mindset that has these fixed ideas of gender roles. The following tweet and the context made this quite clear. By taking offence at something like this we don’t further the cause of women. In fact, we do the opposite but implying that something as inconsequential as a tweet from a fast-food chain has the power to offend and promote a regressive mindset.
Meanwhile, the people at Burger King got what they wanted in spite of deleting their tweet and appearing to back down and relent to public outrage. They got people all over the world talking and tweeting about their brand (even if a significant proportion of those were angry and outraged). Numerous people who wouldn’t otherwise have known about the scholarships now do, so perhaps that old adage is true after all: all publicity is good publicity.
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