Marketing and Burger King
W5 ASSIGNMENT
1. What do you think of Burger King’s advertising tactics? Is it OK to attract new customers while alienating others? Is Burger King’s advertising ethical? Explain.
The success of advertising is very often based on its ability to surprise or in BK’s case shock the viewer. I think that the goal of each organization is to maximize its profits. BK like all organizations had a particular target market segment which it wanted to cater to. Thus, its advertisements were meant to appeal to this target market, i.e. 18-34 year old people. And as the results show, the advertising tactics were highly successful and turned the once stagnating company’s fortunes around. Therefore, I think BK’s advertising tactics were acceptable and in general it is ok to design advertisement campaigns so as they appeal to your target market. The purpose in not to alienate others, but rather a unwanted consequence. If a company strives to make advertisements that are acceptable to everyone it will risk being labeled as ordinary and boring. In this regard, I do not think the advertisement tactics used were unethical. However, BK could have been more careful about the medium of advertisement. They could have tried harder to avoid their advertisements being viewed by children.
2. How did Burger King manage the negative publicity it received over the content of its Coq Roq Web site?
Burger King took their advertising tactics to the limit in the coqRoq website. The advertising which was meant to target their market segment was increasing offensive to even this segment. The crude and provocative taglines were removed but the handling of the negative publicity was not up to the mark. The reason given of some software malfunction was hard to believe. This is because the advertising history of BK was in line with this newest controversy. Therefore, I think it would have been much more dignified of BK to accept that it had crossed the line in its aggressive
1. What do you think of Burger King’s advertising tactics? Is it OK to attract new customers while alienating others? Is Burger King’s advertising ethical? Explain.
The success of advertising is very often based on its ability to surprise or in BK’s case shock the viewer. I think that the goal of each organization is to maximize its profits. BK like all organizations had a particular target market segment which it wanted to cater to. Thus, its advertisements were meant to appeal to this target market, i.e. 18-34 year old people. And as the results show, the advertising tactics were highly successful and turned the once stagnating company’s fortunes around. Therefore, I think BK’s advertising tactics were acceptable and in general it is ok to design advertisement campaigns so as they appeal to your target market. The purpose in not to alienate others, but rather a unwanted consequence. If a company strives to make advertisements that are acceptable to everyone it will risk being labeled as ordinary and boring. In this regard, I do not think the advertisement tactics used were unethical. However, BK could have been more careful about the medium of advertisement. They could have tried harder to avoid their advertisements being viewed by children.
2. How did Burger King manage the negative publicity it received over the content of its Coq Roq Web site?
Burger King took their advertising tactics to the limit in the coqRoq website. The advertising which was meant to target their market segment was increasing offensive to even this segment. The crude and provocative taglines were removed but the handling of the negative publicity was not up to the mark. The reason given of some software malfunction was hard to believe. This is because the advertising history of BK was in line with this newest controversy. Therefore, I think it would have been much more dignified of BK to accept that it had crossed the line in its aggressive