Big beef ? ‘McWhopper’ ad brouhaha mostly just sizzle
Why the underdog wins either way as McDonald’s seemingly snubs Burger King’s offer for Peace Day
The home of the Whopper has extended a peace offering in the decades-old burger wars, only to have its olive branch seemingly slapped away by McDonald’s.
But Burger King’s offer on Wednesday to merge the fast food giants’ iconic burgers wasn’t a real flag of truce at all, according to marketing experts. The Canadian-owned chain never expected McDonald’s to agree, they say.
In the cutthroat conflict of adversarial advertisements that go back at least to the 1970s, there appears to be no armistice on the horizon.
A new battle is already brewing after McDonald’s seemingly snubbed Burger King ’s offer to collectively sell a “McWhopper” to “get the world talking about Peace Day.”
Burger King had put ads in American newspapers proposing to mash together the Whopper and the Big Mac and sell the hybrid on the International Day of Peace on Sept. 21.
McDonald’s responded in a Facebook post signed by its CEO, Steve Easterbrook.
“We love the intention but think our two brands could do something bigger to make a difference,” Easterbrook wrote.
“And every day, let’s acknowledge that between us there is simply a friendly business competition and certainly not the unequaled circumstances of the real pain and suffering of war.”
Burger King has yet to publicly respond to McDonald’s message, though the ball appears to be out of its court. Easterbrook had written in the Facebook message, “We’ll be in touch.”
And then he fired another shot, adding in a postscript, “A simple phone call will do next time.”
Burger King and McDonald’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Burger King’s ads were placed in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The Miami-based fast food giant also created a website, mcwhopper.com, laying out its peace terms in considerable detail. The McWhopper was to be sold in Atlanta, the midway point between Illinois, where McDonald’s is headquartered, and Miami — “neutral territory,” the website calls it. Workers were to wear hybrid uniforms and the sandwich being sold would have an equal number of ingredients from both companies.
The website included also a mock “peace treaty,” urging McDonald’s to agree to “end the beef, with beef.”
The initiative would promote Peace One Day, an anti-war non-profit.
Experts are divided on the soundness of Burger King’s plan, but agree — far-fetched an idea though it may be — it wasn’t a public relations disaster.
Alan Middleton, a marketing and brand professor from the Schulich School of Business at York University, called it a win-win situation for the underdog Burger King, whose revenue last year was about onesixth of McDonald’s $6.6 billion (U.S.)
“If McDonald’s is, in my view, silly enough to go ahead with it, Burger King has now placed itself on a parallel,” he said.
If McDonald’s doesn’t bite, Middleton said, then Burger King still benefits from the resulting publicity.
But Jo-Ann McArthur, president of the Toronto food marketing firm Nourish, said Burger King’s move was a bad idea that ultimately reaped little.
“Leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” she said, adding that likening the advertising fight between fast food giants — a figurative war — to real conflicts is inappropriate.
McArthur described the campaign as ultimately “talking to yourself.”
There were only 14,000 tweets about the issue by late Wednesday morning, a paltry number in marketing terms, she said.
McDonald’s response was lauded as both diplomatic and shrewd.
“It’s their way of saying, ‘I will never take my iconic burger and mash it with your burger, ever,’ ” said Tony Chapman, founder of Tony Chapman Reactions.
Doug Fisher, president of Torontobased food service consultancy FHG International, said Burger King had not thought through its plan, and McDonald’s was right to ignore it.
“One’s flame broiled, one’s done on a flat top,” Fisher said of the different ways the Whopper and Big Mac are cooked. “It sounds like a PR thing. I don’t think you can do it, anyways. “Why would McDonald’s want someone else’s meat in their bun?”