What You Didn’t See in the Awesome Burger King Anti-Bullying Video

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Headline from Adweek[/caption]

Staggeringly Awesome

The “Bullying Jr.” video from Burger King is well worth your time if you haven’t seen it already.

It’s got great storytelling and fantastic editing.

Real humans are performing either regrettable or heroic deeds in unscripted ways. In front of the camera.

The video is also … big business — and I’ve gotta believe that there’s a fine line to be walked when producing these brand uplift stories.

Are these stories meaningful social commentaries? Or are they using cheap tricks to elicit real emotions, all for a corporate brand’s benefit?

Big Business, Big Spending

The David Agency created “Bullying Jr” with Burger King.

The agency won Burger King’s business three years ago. At the time, an Adweek story put Burger King’s estimated global media spending at $325 million.

Some executives from both Burger King and The David Agency had worked together or known each other through the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign.

Parts of that multi pronged campaign were also a triumph of storytelling, editing and unscripted magic. The campaign’s principal creative featured a sketch artist who drew a picture of women who described themselves, then sketched the same women described by others.

Canon’s “The Lab: Decoy” campaign hit many of the same notes. Six renowned photographers were invited to shoot a portrait of the same man … who came to the studio each time with a different back story.

Dove put down $190 million in ad spending in 2015.

Canon net sales worldwide actually fell from $33.4 billion in 2015 to $2.99 billion in 2016. Still, a lot of money.

The Haters

We’re talking about big ad budgets, great video storytelling, and, yes, campaigns that deserve awards of all kinds.

Still, one man’s corporate responsibility is another’s sneaky marketing manipulation.

This blogger claim’s the Burger King “Bullying Jr.” campaign portrays bullying that isn’t “realistic” — and adds:

If a bunch of teens shove another kid to the ground in one of your restaurants, why is it the other customers’ job to break that up? Shouldn’t your managers be trained in conflict resolution?

A review in Fast Company says the “Bullying Jr.” campaign is as much about selling burgers as it is about anti-bullying:

We’ve seen anti-bullying PSAs, and we’ve definitely seen burger-chain ads, but rarely have we seen them together in the same spot. Which makes perfect sense. But here, Burger King manages to pull off this odd couple of advertising.

A cynic would say that no good deed goes unpunished — but what’s a brand to do?

Perhaps a Win

Since October 17, tons of publications and news outlets (including GQ, the Huffington Post, CNN.com, Refinery29, The Today Show online, Fortune, and Time) have generated some kind of story about the “Bullying Jr.” campaign.

All told, these stories have been shared by readers on either Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn more than 650,000 times.

That’s a lot of free publicity.

That’s a lot of engagement.

And that’s a big win in the elusive category of being a part of the conversation.

In the graph below, the purple bars chart the number of social shares on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn that mention “burger” and “king” from October 17 through October 24.

The grey bars chart the number of social shares that mention “burger” and “king” and “bully.”

The red dotted line illustrates the relative pace of news coverage that mentions “Burger King” over this same time period.

A quick glance at the data shows how the conversation involving the Burger King brand during this time period was dominated — almost wholly replaced — by chatter about the brand AND its bullying campaign.

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Source: Buzzsumo[/caption]

But there’s also this:

Burger King trails nine other fast food brands in brand value — McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subway, KFC, Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza, Tim Horton’s, Chipotle, and Taco Bell. (Source: Millward Brown via Statista)

For a company nipping at nine other heels, you’d want a campaign like “Bullying Jr.” to send awareness about your brand through the roof … expanding the width and breadth of your influence in the conversation.

Perhaps simply saturating the existing conversation is not enough.

Unless … you’re simply trying to help stop bullying.

What Did We Miss In the Video?

So was the campaign a good idea or a bad idea? Was it done with the aim of corporate responsibility or consumer manipulation?

Years ago, I heard an Off-Broadway actor speak about his experiences in the theater.

He claimed to be a pretty stand-up guy … and occasionally played a character on stage who was anything but.

The actor was asked whether he felt like he had made any moral compromises when accepting those roles.

“No,” he said … and I can’t remember what he said next.

I didn’t miss his explanation … it just apparently didn’t leave an impression.

I guess he settled the question in a way that, odd, was impressive … or seemed reasonable … or was presented with a point of view that I could get behind.

THIS is what I think can be missed in “Bullying Jr.”: a kind of impressive unimpressiveness.

Flipping the Narrative

More than the bullies, more than the ‘shocking’ implication that people care more about their burgers than their fellow man, more than Burger King’s motives for producing and running the campaign …

… what’s the thing that is MOST memorable about the video?

The two strangers who do stand up to the bullies.

Their impressive response to a dramatic situation is overshadowed by hamburger destruction, customer anger, and social criticism.

Even news coverage of the campaign focused on these things.

(Curiously, both the Dove Real Beauty campaign and Canon’s “The Lab: Decoy” also have this kind of critical, look-in-the-mirror approach … though in a less edgier way.)

I think I might have flipped the narrative had I been part of the “Bullying Jr.” project.

Rather than emphasize the failures of the mob, I might have given the spotlight to the heroes.

My takeaway would have been “These two people did something extraordinary” versus “Can you believe what happened in this restaurant?”

This alternative approach is still an effective campaign against bullying. It’s still a fulsome, shareable story. And it’s still reflective of a brand that cares.

In my view — when given a choice — brand messaging is much better off celebrating what’s uncovered about our strengths … than harping on what’s so crappy about our weaknesses.